Weight of a world: Limbo

Late to the party as always, a surprise gift of Microsoft Points finally allowed me to jump in on the Limbo bandwagon as I was unwilling to pay $15 for a game this reputedly short (though  apparently satisfying).

 

Set in an dream-like world of foggy black and white, Limbo is a side-scrolling physics puzzle-platformer, but it is also so much more. The player controls a boy, silhouetted in pitch black along with the midground elements, with baroque and distorted foreground and background elements fading to grey smudges.

 

Borrowing heavily from German Expressionism for its visual style, Limbo also leans on elements from The Lord of the Flies and common phobias (spiders, parasites). All elements are well suited to the abstract world and are surrounded by ethereal music and sound design. The environment changes from an insect and arachnid infested forest to a dilapidated but trap laden urban environment, culminating in the dangerous gravity challenging bowels of factory.

 

What struck me immediately were the snappy yet whimsical animations that told both story and character, yet functionally obeyed the procedural rules of the engine. Physics dominates the gameplay, requiring an understanding motion and momentum as applied solutions to extremely clever puzzles. I often forgot that all things in the world have weight, and behave as such, leading to constant 'DOH' moments when a puzzle would finally work. Approaching play as a gamer hindered me, because I always looked first to the trite gameplay solution, rather than the real-world physics based solution.

 

My wife, a non-gamer, was entranced immediately by Limbo. The opaque visuals and the Grimm's Fairy Tales-esque graphic but not explicit violence drew her in, evoking empathy and wonder. Glimpses into the world and its inhabitants led to questions about the state of this reality, and if this dreamlike environment was in fact a dream.

 

Limbo is evocative without preening, and has no pretense. It is somber and the joy of each puzzle solved or trap evaded is muted by the constant danger of what is next in a world created to kill you.

 

Always leaving more questions than answers, Limbo is indeed insanely short, but satisfying.

Jump Around Get Up and Get Down

So, Kinect.

 

I swore a million times over I would not spend money on a glorified Wii until a killer app appeared, something appealed to me as a "core" gamer. Something that would make me give a damn and make the gameplay unique and compelling.

 

So, here we are, with a mechanized black eyeball tracking my movement across the room and (mostly) obeying my verbal commands. It is neat. It is slow and cumbersome to navigate a menu compared to the swish-clicks of buttons and thumbsticks.

 

What finally compelled me to bring this tiny Wall-E into my home was a change needed in my actual lifestyle, not the world(s) inside the game.

 

I am a big fatty fat fat. Weight has been a bouncing ball all of my life, tied entirely to my interest in activity. When given a social motivation to exercise I have and when left to my own devices I haven't, and I have been left to my own devices for the better part of seven years.

 

My real life is a litany of injury and pain, constant reminders that I am carrying the equivalent of an 8-yr old around all of time. Watching my body shift to compensate where my lower back arches more now, straining my stomach muscles to try and hold aloft a shelf of flesh that now migrates over and below my belt-line sickens and saddens me.

 

Depression and body image go way back with me.

 

So, after consulting with my wife, we plunged in and immediately bought a single game, Your Shape Fitness (we rented Dance Central to see if it would be fun or even possible given flinging nearly 300 lbs around to a beat is difficult at the best of times).

 

I figured, in my desperation and laziness, that if I tied exercising to my escapism of gaming (and fed my desire for achievements) I might break a sweat.

 

Your Shape has a clumsy finicky interface that is easily confused by dangling clothing or an errant cat that meanders through the frame. However it is a reasonably deep exercise class, marking you on body position and timing. It measures your BMI and adjusts the workout to something that hopefully won't kill you. The Tai Chi movements are a wonderful low impact way to warm up and down.

 

The only thing that will keep me from using this successfully is me. I literally have no excuses now, no reasons not to get off my fat ass and move.

 

It hurt my ass the day after my first 30 mins of huffing and puffing. I think that's a good thing.

Die Another Tomorrow When You Come- Jame Bond 007 Blood Stone (PS3)

With recent word of publisher Activision's 90 day "restructuring" of British Developer Bizarre Creations, talking about their most recent, if middling, effort is discouraging. James Bond 007:Blood Stone is a third person shooter, following an original story rather than a movie tie-in, with Daniel Craig reprising the titular role in voice and likeness as does Judi Dench as "M".


Ostensibly on a cover, shoot, repeat cycle, the story literally drops Bond into an international mystery revolving around the creation and sale of bio-weapons. Singer Joss Stone becomes a Bond girl as the story's female protagonist and sings the credit sequence song, which in and of itself is part of a missed opportunity.

When played on PS3 Bloodstone opens as expected, with the MGM logo followed by Activision and Bizarre Creations , only to shudder to a dead halt as the game does a 10 minute mandatory install. While this is non-issue on the 360 (and pre-installed on PC), the install itself could have been an opportunity for immersion. By dropping the Activision/Bizarre logos until the credit sequence and instead having the classic Bond turn and fire sequence follow the MGM logo, and then stream a pre-credits mini-game while installing to PS3, the opening would immediately be more true to the source and invisible on non-PS3 platforms.

Missed opportunities and good intentions are the hallmark of the game. Like another recent Activision game, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Bloodstone directs the player down a series of linear corridors, as enemies swarm in wave after wave until bodies litter the floor. The hand-holding continues in vehicle sections, most notably an early boat chase that while graphically stunning, essentially renders the player as a passive partner in the experience. Barely needing to steer the boat and only able to fire Bond's weapon when prompted, the entire sequence is an extended exercise in interactive cinema.

A more egregious example of a vehicle section gone wrong is a mid-game chase following a partially frozen river. Not only are the ice and the water often essentially the same color, the chase contains no checkpoints, which is an annoyance at best given the player is hounded by a Russian Hind helicopter. Mistakes either result in a mission ending dip in the river, or a bump against a wall stalling the car long enough for the Hind to perforate the player. This was easily the worst and perhaps intentionally the shortest mission in the game.

On-foot, the controls are loose and the camera often in the wrong place. Following the GTA 4 method of camera distance and character momentum, sudden shifts in direction cause Bond to lean dramatically, swinging the camera close or wide depending on the distance to the nearest obstruction. Combined with a basic cover system, this often leads to death as returning to cover is stymied by the camera. Checkpoints on foot are reasonably generous, and aided by the "FOCUS AIM" rewards system.

Up to three "Focus Aim" points are awarded, one per takedown, allowing the player to string together one-shot kills, quickly eliminating otherwise troublesome distant or well-covered enemies. Combined with the brutal, varied and vastly entertaining takedown system, players are able to engage in some strategy, alternating between close-up hand to hand or stealth attacks, and ranged weapons.

The ability to apply even mild strategy compared to the relentless forward momentum of most shooters makes the Bloodstone more entertaining than it really should be. The enemy AI is afflicted with the same condition as the enemies in COD:BLOPS in that they fling themselves haphazardly at the player that they might show off their ducking and rolling animations before dying. No actual tactics or humanistic behaviors are ever displayed, rendering Bloodstone one more shooting gallery.

Strangely, though diamonds play a large role in the credits sequence, there is no actual reference to blood diamonds or blood stones. There is a tangential tie to a character's back story, but it is never fully explored.

Blood Stone ends in anti-climatic vehicle sequence and following cut scene that fails to resolve the main plot and blatantly panders for a sequel that will never come. Unfortunately flawed especially in the vehicle sections, given the developers pedigree, Blood Stone at 10 hours is at best a rental.

COD-Blocked: Call of Duty Black Ops (360)

Playing an FPS on a console is one of those things in life I hate, like people who cross the parking lot diagonally, strolling along as if the entire space was theirs alone.A long time PC gamer, I am spoiled by the responsive accuracy of the mouse and keyboard. I generally loathe twin stick shooting, as I ALWAYS disable the aim-assist, preferring to actually try to shoot what I aim at.

I am not often successful and in fact the Halo series are close to the only shooters that feel tight and responsive to me on console. Somehow Bungie's secret sauce of loose responsive vertical movement and I assume some kind of predictive code combined with satisfying spray'n'pray weapons make it feel right.

Call Of Duty:Black Ops does not.

Set during the cold war, with a flashback to the familiar and well-worn territory of World War II, COD:BLOPS follows soldier/special ops/secret agent? Alex Mason. Voiced by Sam Worthington, Mason's most distinguishing feature is his lineage from the little know Australian area of Alaska, as Worthington's accent veers more than a drunk kitten on a lazy susan.

The story opens with an interrogation of the player as Mason, and flashes back to the experiences that lead to this moment. Hopping from Cuba, to Russia, to Vietnam, COD:BLOPS follows the now formulaic COD path of telling the story from multiple viewpoints, in multiple locations, though never straying from the corridor shooting that have long defined this series. Often more like an interactive movie, the player is directed from checkpoint to checkpoint in breathless fashion, interrupted only long enough to show a scripted sequence or a cut scene.It is even possible to complete entire missions without firing a shot, as seen here.

While the previous entry in the franchise flirted with controversy in the "No Russian" mission (an essentially empty exercise in shock rather than meaning), developer Treyarch avoids such potential stumbles by offering nothing new at all. In an early mission, set during the Souyez launches in Russian, the game hands the player reskinned versions of the weapons used in MW2. The anachronism is so blatant that the game's dialogue even addresses it as the player fires a Javelin missile, something not yet invented for 30 years.

COD:BLOPS picks up steam during a series of sequences set in Vietnam. Drenched in cliched atmosphere, wide scale battles rage in and around entrenched defenses as aerial napalm strikes and massive lines of explosive detonate and annihilate scores of enemies, generating real chaos. Eventually, the battle is taken underground in a tunnel rat sequence that while heavily scripted has some truly memorable moments. Unfortunately the game takes a turn for the worse in cribbing whole sequences from movies like The Deer Hunter and Full Metal Jacket, culminating in one of the worst missions in recent history, an on-rails helicopter battle using a Russian Hind.

Funneled up river to the next checkpoint, the player never actually controls the vehicle, with only slight vertical and lateral movement possible. Essentially a light-gun version of a strafing run, the control scheme becomes hideously incompetent when facing enemy helicopters. Unable to maneuver in any reasonable fashion, the dogfight degenerates into literal circle strafing to avoid incoming fire while peppering enemies with missiles. Unfortunate and frustrating, the sequence adds nothing to game but additional playtime.

The Infamous Hind Sequence

As the story progresses it becomes more bombastic and less coherent, eventually morphing into a James Bond style megalomaniacal master plan that abandons all sense of history.While COD:BLOPS does have a far less dense, more linear and clear storyline than the Modern Warfare games, it undercuts itself by never taking the time to develop any of the characters, or even explore the historical context of the time period.

Empty of any meaning or even risk, COD:BLOPS delivers on the promise of a COD game by repurposing tech and design formula without bringing anything new to the equation, save for an after-credits level that is the only inspired and truly entertaining part of the game.

Unsurprisingly it is already a massive success, ensuring this franchise will continue.

A Perfect Copy-Force Unleashed II (360)

I have never been more torn in my feelings for a game than I was for the original Force Unleashed. An essentially broken platformer that add repetitive combat and puzzles and rendered the player as ridiculously overpowered apprentice to Darth Vadar also contained one of the best Star Wars stories to date. Linking the prequels to the originals, TFU had moment of sheer joy pinioned with moment of pure tedium.

Like any good sequel TFU II does what the original did, only better.

TFU II returns the apprentice to Vadar’s side, a clone of the original Starkiller (one of many), that escapes his bonds to find the only thing that is clear to him, his transplanted memories of Juno, the love interest from the first game.

Armed with two (2!) lightsabers this time, Starkiller travels from world to world in a mish-mashed plot that feel likes a handful of swiss cheese. One could make the assumption that the cutscenes were the first thing completed in the game, and the team ran out of time and money to create the connective tissue between, so they dropped a bunch of the plot; it is that disjointed.

At the end of TFU Starkiller was so overpowered that the endless cannon fodder thrown at the character could be literally tossed aside en mass. The only real threat would be Vadar and eventually the Emperor. Starkiller begins the sequel with all of his force abilities intact, leaving the player to upgrade them as they see fit. Adding in the ability to “Jedi Mind Trick” enemies to turn on their cohorts combined with “Force Fury” allows the player opportunity to turn an entire group of enemies against one another, only to slice the survivors in half.

Unlike the brutally painful Star Destroyer sequence in TFU, TFU liberally sprinkles its painful moments throughout the game. Repetitive and uninspired boss fights are bracketed by poorly placed checkpoints. The only truly exciting and inventive moments take place in free fall, as Starkiller plunges down through miles of atmosphere, dodging and destroying enemies and the environment along the way.

The narrative and emotional climax of the game comes full circle to cloning facility on Kamino. The end boss repeats the same structure five (5!) times as you ascend the cloning tanks, making the battle a punishment to be endured to reach the truly dramatic and engaging end sequence. Only there does the game finally deliver on some of the emotional and narrative promise.

A full 50% shorter than the original and emptier than an bag of invisible popcorn, TFU II is a disappointing follow-up and at best a rental.

An Un-Winnable Battle: Medal of Honor (360)

Full disclosure, this game is short. Like Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 short. Like LOTR Extended Editions short.

At 4-5 hours its hella short. That aside, I liked it a lot more than Modern Warfare 2. Unlike the Bruckheimer-esque bombastic nonsense narrative of MW 2, MOH has a deliberate and specific pace. While it outright steals mechanics and set-pieces from MW 2, the singular vision of the game is to reveal at least some of the reality of modern combat. Weapons and tactics are reasonably realistic and the game has a couple of truly climatic set-pieces that grip the player in a brief unfettered bout of pure tension.

Switching between Tier 1 operators infiltrating Al Qaeda camps in and around the mountains of Afganistan, Army Rangers sent to secure areas "cleared" by the Tier 1's, and in select few sections, in vehicle missions, the most notable of which is as an Apache gunner, MOH never tries to be anything but a MW 2 clone. The creative direction given the team is clear, in the most Kotick way, that this is intended to exploit the COD audience by giving them more of what they already have.

While there are moments of sheer joy and glimmers of originality in the game, such as a sniping sequence that gives the .50 caliber sniper rifle its due, it never delves too deep. You are given a spotter and told about wind speed and distance, but the only real possible impediment to your aim is how long the player forces the character to hold his breath.

Medal of Honor is a franchise that desperately needed a reboot, and moving the setting and gameplay to an ongoing conflict was a brave choice, but the game suffers as that was the only brave choice. Hopefully MOH earns a chance at a sequel, and an opportunity to develop gameplay that matches the bravura of its setting.

A Trip Worth Taking: Enslaved (360)

Quiet moments are few and far between in most games. Silence is difficult, even in a film, as only the acting can carry the emotion and the story forward. Without that connection between the performers and thus with the audience, silence because awkward pauses and dead air.

Enslaved has many quiet moments, the most powerful of which happens late in the game, structurally where a film would slow just before the beginning of the third act. Told in whispers and closeups, it stands as an example of how games have matured as a medium. In that moment of pure quiet emotion, Enslaved fulfills the promise shown in the bombastic opening sequence.

Spectacular character animation reveals both main characters in the first minutes; Monkey, a brash sinewy brawler, struggles in his bonds, within a pod. Across the hall a similar pod opens with an explosion and a ragged but beautiful young woman,Trip, staggers out into freedom. As she escapes, Monkey's own prison is broken and it becomes apparent whatever Trip did is having widespread effect on what is revealed to be a flying vessel. The basic movement and combat mechanics are revealed through narrative as Monkey moves from set piece to set piece within a disintegrating vessel. Monkey's very movements reveal who and what he is, rather than use rote animation cycles.

Trip and Monkey finally meet face to face, only to have Trip, an electronics genius with no survival skills, enslaves Monkey with a headband that links their hearts. If she dies, he dies. This conceit drives the emotional core of the film as the two characters earn each other's trust, culminating a quiet moment of truth late in the game.

Though the story and characters are nearly unparalleled, the gameplay is repetitive and shallow. A slight RPG layer allows the player to upgrade Monkey's offensive and defensive abilities but the same moves are used over and over. Platforming is one of the gameplay pillars, and while it is rewarding and fun, Enslaved suffers from handholding and over-directing the player.Taking a cue from Uncharted in leading the player through art direction, color and character animations would have benefited this game tremendously.

Enslaved is a pinnacle of character animation and story, hindered by mediocre gameplay. It is a must play if only to see the future of narrative in gaming.

A Reach beyond their grasp

Having completed the Campaign of Halo Reach on both Heroic and Legendary (and thanks to MitchyD for the co-op invite), the only emotion I have left for this game is disappointment.

Taking place chronologically prior to Halo: Combat Evolved, H:R follows a six man team of Spartans, (Noble team) based on the planet Reach, home of the Spartan program. Investigating what sounds like a simple act of piracy leads them into a discovery of a full-on invasion of the planet by the Covenant. What is clear from playing this short 8-10 hour game is that Bungie has made some massive assumptions about the audience in crafting what can loosely be called a narrative. It is assumed the audience already know what Reach is, what it represents and why the invasion is occurring. It is assumed that the relationships between the Spartans and those others within the Spartan program itself are well known. It assumes the backbone of the story is ingrained into those playing the game, so the developers could paint with the lightest of strokes. Finally, it assumes we will care about these characters and their eventual sacrifices because we already know all of the above. Bungie is relying on the audience to do the heavy lifting, and given the game is a prequel destined to lead directly to the events of Halo:CE, these are all erroneous assumptions.

It is also clear Bungie lost interest in Halo some time ago and while they have made a superb multiplayer experience, the single player campaign is bolted onto repurposed MP maps and tied together with unclear and underwhelming cutscenes. Essentially abandoning the mythology they created Bungie told what could be the greatest story of the Halo universe in the worst possible way and in direct competition/contrast to their own novelization "The Fall of Reach".

Though the prettiest of the Halo games to date, Reach owes a great deal to Halo 3:ODST in its structure. The appearance of open environments are actually simply massive corridors populated with waves of enemies sporting weapons and tech that never again appear in the Halo universe. The most compelling and only original mission of the game is a launch into space aboard a Sabre fighter, where the battle becomes a thrilling zero-gee ballet against waves of enemy craft. It concludes with a Halo 2 "homage" fight in vacuum as the Covenant ship is breached and boarded, and returns to repetitive form.

A late game section has Noble flying from sky-scraper to sky-scraper as the strangely empty city around them burns. Unlike the far too short urban combat of Halo 2, Reach again follows the ODST model of battles set in an empty area, after the city has already fallen. While Halo 2 had constant chatter of wounded civilians and soldiers in its urban environments, Reach peppers random civilians and soldiers as window dressing, with corpses ending up being just part of the window dressing rather than reflecting the actual impact of a global invasion. Perhaps a victim of an aging engine unable to keep up with the ambition of the developers it ends up having little impact.

As a multiplayer experience, Bungie continues to have virtually no competition, with MP integration built deep into the experience starting right from the main menu. Designed to give the player the experience of progress without awarding game unbalancing perks a la the "Activision method", Reach has deep customization of the player character appearance and sound. Though the minefield of Xbox Live is wrought with obnoxious homophobes/racists, the ability to drop in and out of both campaign and multiplayer with friends is almost effortless (unless you are trying to tie two separate 360 on the same home network to an internet session apparently).
Halo: Reach is the end of Bungie's stewardship of the franchise and their exhaustion shows. Mining their own back-story while framing it in the template of the previous games allowed them to capitalize on their strength as a multiplayer developer while paying lip service to a single player experience. Reach is at best a mediocre SP game and a disappointing end to one of the defining franchises of modern gaming.

State of my PC nation

Given that I often have the same games installed on my PC over multiple hardware changes I thought it would be cool to capture some screenshots of the games I am playing with it iteration of hardware.

It is also striking the level of detail even older games have when running at resolutions far beyond what is capable on current console generations. The vegetation in the Just Cause shot is a good example of this.

Running with the following specs I captured the below using FRAPS at 1680 x 1050 unless noted:

1.8 Ghz Intel E2160 Dual Core CPU
6 gigs DDR 2 RAM, running dual channel 400 FSB
Radeon HD 3850 graphics
Creative Audigy SB 5.1
Gigabyte P35 motherboard

Antialiasing and v-sync disabled with usually 4x Anisotropic enabled

Age Of Conan 1280 x 768 Graphics set to Low/Medium (click to enlarge)


Borderlands Graphics set to High(click to enlarge)


Dragon Age: Origins details set to High


Fallout 3 Details set to High


Dead Space Details set to High


Ghostbusters 1440 x 900 details set to medium (brutally buggy port)


JUST CAUSE Details set to High


Metro 2033 Comparison shots details set to high vs some details off



Titan Quest Details set to High


S.T.A.L.K.E.R details set to High

Game-A-Day Post-A-year

Fall 2010 is about to drop like a 10-ton weight,lead by the juggernaut Halo: Reach. Unfortunatley the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak and I have grossly neglected the simple act of writing to this blog about the games I play on a daily basis. While this tardiness may well never change, neither will my recreational habits so here's hoping I can knock some stuff out.

Upcoming is a snapshot of my PC setup, with the hopes of making this blog part of a living record of the hardware changes that happen and its impact on games, as I often have games installed for years, unfinished.

For now, this is a quick breakdown of what I have been tearing up over since the spring.

Red Dead Redemption: From Rockstar, the makers of the Grand Theft Auto series, this open world Western set just in the early 1900's scratches every itch a Western fan can have. Beautiful and sprawling, RDR follows John Marsten, a bad man who has done bad things but is trying to find a new life with his wife and son on the frontier. Unapologetically violent, RDR manages authenticity without straining credibility and is a deep 40 hour story. The ending, while unpopular, is poetic and appropriate.

Alpha Protocol: A spy story wrapped in RPG dressing, AP is a brutal mess of unfinished code and relentless ambition.Simply one of the ugliest Unreal Engine games ever made and burdened with a sluggish control scheme, the game stands only on its voice-acting and story. Filled to brimming with half-baked concepts and poorly executed ideas, AP is a frustrating kind of fun, the "time before you do the crime" and saved only by its story.

Blur: Advertised as a "grown-up's Mario Kart" Blur liberally lifts power-ups and tactics from the Nintendo playbook to create a fast paced racing game where victory can be stolen at the last second with a properly applied power-up. Varied tracks and unlock-able vehicles in both single-player and multi-player extend play time, making for a exciting variation on racing games.

Split/Second: Set as a high-concept reality TV show where contestants race against each, outside attacks and destructive changes in the track itself, Split/Second is thrilling in the short term but grows repetitive quickly. The destructible tracks are re-purposed but never really changed and the "rubber-band" effect of the AI never getting too far ahead nor letting the player dominate grows tiresome quickly.

Alan Wake: A long in the making followup to Remedy's Max Payne, Alan Wake follows a writer and his wife who attempt to vacation in a sleepy town in the Pacific Northwest. Once they arrive they are attacked by a dark force that appears to stem directly from the Wake's own words. Literary minded and often surreal, Alan Wake suffers from extraordinarily repetitive gameplay. The ambiguous story is ambitious but under-served, making for a game long on ideas and short on entertainment.

Prince Of Perisa Forgotten Sands: One of the slowest starting games mentioned, POP:FS opens exactly like every other POP game and takes its time getting started. The combat mechanics are extensively simplified following the example of last year's Prince Of Persia "reboot" rather than following the example of POP:The Two Thrones. Released to coincide but not replicate the POP film, Forgotten Sands has a compelling story and after quickly ramps up a few hours in to become a challenging platformer with light RPG elements.

Just Cause 2: A sequel to the Robert Rodriguez inspired original again find our hero with an inexhaustible supply of parachutes and grappling hooks. Hampered by atrocious voice-acting and writing the campaign story is pointless and best ignored in favor of exploring the massive game map, wreaking havoc. Just Cause 2 is a silly time killer that like any good popcorn, is forgotten as soon as you are finished with it.

Bayonetta: Sexy and insane, Bayonetta is a love letter to classic Sega games wrapped in Devil May Cry style combat mechanics. An incompressible story litters the gameplay, but double entendre's and one-liners make the experience entertaining outside of the spasmodic fighting. Lightening fast reflexes are a must to play the game to its fullest.

Aliens vs Predator: Essentially a remake of the original PC AVP by developer's Rebellion, AVP is a dark repetitive game suffering from loose controls. Brutal graphic violence is unable to compensate for cliche scenarios leaving me wishing I had simply replayed either of the original PC AVP games.

Left 4 Dead 2: Shipped only a year after the original L4D, Valve stunned the world by releasing a sequel within that timespan that was also good. L4D2 is tight, multi-player team based shooter set in a zombie apocalypse.Fast-paced, violent and scary, L4D2 follows the template set by Portal and L4D by allowing the story to be told by the environment, rather than clunky exposition and cut-scenes.

Metro 2033: Inspired by Half-Life 2 and made by some of the developers of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Metro 2033 is a gorgeous,dark, moody but linear FPS. Set in the Moscow underground after a catastrophic event, humanity struggles to survive while scrabbling for food and supplies under the near constant attack of mutant creatures. While I have only started the game, I am already struck by the mood and hungry to keep going.

Crackdown 2: A direct sequel apparently using the original engine and art assets from Crackdown, CD 2 is a empty exercise in open world destruction, similar in tone to Just Cause 2 but without the goofy mass destruction. All of the unique and exciting parts of Crackdown have been amplified and expanded to become the entirety of the game, robbing them of that excitement.

Dead Rising 2 Case Zero: A prequel to DR 2 and an XBLA release, Case Zero retains the central gameplay of DR, along with some annoying contrivances tagging along. Providing a strong backstory for what will be the retail release of DR 2, Case Zero is tightly controlled, gory, funny adventure in small town America. Loaded with re-playability and more direct method of combining items to create super weapons, Case Zero is fantastic value for $5.

Blink Of An Eye:Six Months of Gaming

Usually the first few months into a new year are a wasteland for entertainment. Long known as a dumping ground for film properties unable to compete for summer dollars or good enough to compete for awards, this hard march to spring also affected game releases.

Until now.

2010 has proven itself to be the beneficiary of crowding in the 2009 holiday season, a trend that appears to be continuing into 2011. Spectacular games seem to be flowing unfettered on a near weekly basis with no sign of slowing down.

Since January my life has been dominated by the following experiences:


Mass Effect 2 ate my February like a fat kid on a Twinkie, with a whopping 40 hours of play. The pop-in and streaming issues of the tech from the first game are alleviated by removing the massive open environments, in exchange for tightly orchestrated corridors backed by unreachable open areas, like matte paintings in a movie. ME2 story is taut and thrilling, marred only by the brutally tedious need to scan and mine minerals from planets. Easily half of the game play time is taken up by this numbing task and it would ruin a lesser game.


Dante's Inferno is an attractive God Of War clone, literally stealing mechanics and game play from the trilogy Kratos made. Backed by a solid story re-interpreted from the epic poem, this brutally violent, twisted but visually impressive game is quick 10-15 hours. A locked camera contributes to unnecessary death and replay during platforming, creating pockets of annoyance in otherwise entertaining combat game.

Bioshock 2 suffers from a slow burn, tossing the player face first into repetitive combat without slight nods to story for the first few hours. Once all the major players are introduced, the plot and game play ramp up on a steep climb, culminating in one of the best endings I have ever seen. While not as lofty or cerebral in its goals as its predecessor, Bioshock 2 is a more than worthy sequel.


Heavy Rain is a perplexing game. A successful failure, the notion that it moves the medium forward in terms of storytelling, emotional engagement, drama or narrative is laughable. Brutally painful dialogue, voice acting and clichéd plotting are capped by a "twist" that exists for its own sake. As if by accident, Heavy Rain excels in the moments it allows itself to be a game, and the intuitive leap forward of extending quick-time events into the entire control scheme creates true moments of emotional connection. One can only hope that spurred by the innovative and sometimes gentle aspect of the controls, a stronger developer will take Heavy Rain as a starting point for a truly revolutionary game experience.


God of War 3 is everything one would want from the conclusion of the GOW trilogy. Tight game play combined with truly epic and stunning visuals tie a nearly incoherent plot together. Failing itself in its final moments, God Of War 3 betrays the very heart of the title character, stealing from Kratos everything that made him compelling.

Splinter Cell Conviction is an insanely short but beautifully crafted game. Not as short as Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Conviction single player was finished in under 8 hours. Sam Fisher finds himself caught up in even more tangled intrigue as plot threads are twisted into a nonsensical knot. While the game puts two in the head of its hard-core stealth history, new mechanics allow the player to embody Fisher as an ultra bad-ass, hunting enemies in a manner as satisfying as Arkham Ayslum.


More To Come:

Red Dead Redemption

Alpha Protocol

Blur

Split/Second

Alan Wake

Prince Of Perisa Forgotten Sands

Just Cause 2

Bayonetta

Aliens vs, Predator

Games of the last few months

Since January I have found time to rip through some truly fantastic games, some of which were more of the same, others that tried for something new and many that were plain awesome.

When I look at the amount of time I have invested in many of these experiences it blows my mind. According to tracking on Raptr.com (through Xbox live) I played Assassin's Creed 2 for nearly 40 hours, followed by games like Arkham Asylum and Mass Effect. AC2 literally fought its way into my life, successfully dressing up the repetitive gameplay of the first in new outfits and lending even more conspiracy and confusion to the over-story of Desmond, the Assassins and the Templars. A superior game to the first in almost every way, AC 2 was how I spent most of January.

Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2 was literally an afternoon of gamplay, the elusive AAA game that I am thrilled I rented rather than buying new. The single player campaign is a Bruckheimer-esque trip into nonsense overflowing with massive set-pieces and relentless momentum. Watching the online play devolve almost instantly into a hacker's paradise of broken and unbalanced play, racist 12 year old's and an entire lack of fun made me realize the real attraction of this series has become the online, with the single-player a tacked on afterthought that takes the best moments of MW and turns them into bigger and louder sequences, ruining the charm of the original. My disappointment was palpable.

Mass Effect 2 ate my February like a fat kid on a twinkie. Yet another sequel, it fortunately fell into the AC2 camp rather than MW2, with a whopping 40 hours of play. The pop-in and streaming issues of the tech from the first game are alleviated by removing the massive open environments, in exchange for tightly orchestrated corridors backed by unreachable open areas, like matte paintings in a movie. ME2 story is taut and thrilling, marred only by the brutally tedious need to scan and mine minerals from planets. Easily half of the gameplay time is taken up by this numbing task and it would ruin a lesser game.

Time to catch up

Despite the absence of posts I have been playing a tremendous amount of games since Dec of 2009. Four months into the new year 2010 is shaping up to be a better year than the year before, and I beaten more games in the last few months than I have in the last year. Unfortunately I still have an ever growing list of games I just can't find the time to dig into and finish, and I have found most of the games beaten this year to be 20 hours or less.

This leads to a quandary, do I keep expanding a pile of games I can't finish or do I finally bite the bullet and uninstall those games I haven't looked at in a while? I think it's clear some of the games on the list will never finished, because they don't compel me to finish them.

Those counted on the list of the fallen and soon to be deleted:
-Supreme Commander: While this RTS is silky smooth to play, with tight controls, active A.I. and the vaunted strategic zoom, the story is almost non-existent. With the online multiplayer holding virtually no attraction for me, this game is hitting the recycle bin.
-Far Cry 2: Beautiful and emergent, FC 2 is everything and nothing in that it reflects the intent of the player, rather than directing the player.I could spend days simply wandering the jungle seeing what there is to see without ever completing a mission. Once again, the simplistic and arbitrary story leaves me wanting, though in this case the narrative could in fact be self-created. In the end, I want to continue this journey, but right now, I can't make the time to be self-indulgent enough to lounge about the jungle.
-Fallout 3: A fantastic open world wasteland, that betrays the faith of the player in its final moments, I have kept the game installed partially as a wish to travel the entire wasteland and see what hidden treasures lurk and partially as a benchmark for upgrades.It's time to move on.
-Crysis: Kept this as a benchmark only, can't really myself playing it again despite its graphical prowess. There isn't enough meat on these bones for another go around story-wise (there's that word again)
-VTM:Bloodlines: Buggy and sometimes ugly, this underbaked RPG has lived on through its fanbase and endless patches/updates.I loved playing it despite the performance issues as it combined sex and violence in a truly mature way.I keep it so my wife can play it but she clearly isn't coming around to this anytime soon.

Oldy but Goody

S.T.A.L.K.E.R is staying because the game's moody atmosphere and open world still calls to me, and graphics patches have helped keep the engine from becoming fugly.

Half-Life 2/Ep. 1 & 2 are perennial favorites that are like visits from old friends, and sit contently in my Steam folder, along with The Witcher.

Unlike my console games which rotate in and out of the inventory on a regular basis, PC games grow especially difficult to trade so I simply retire them to their boxes in the closet. I think fondly of them once in a while and hope I see them again, but doubt it, kind of like grandparents.