Shadow Complex

I finished Shadow Complex this weekend, so I thought I'd devote a few blog-bytes to it. I won't repeat what other reviews of the game have said, but I will echo the consensus opinion that the game is definitely worth the fifteen bucks it costs to download it. If this game had come out twenty years ago, we all would have thought it was the most awesomest platform game evar. Ten years ago, it would have been a relic from an ancient era. Today, it's an awesome retro entry in a classic game genre that hasn't gotten a lot of lovin' since FPS and MMOMGRPG games came along. I guess everything is destined to get the "reimagning" treatment eventually these days.

Amongst the specific things I liked were the way it shows you a real-time comparison of your score versus your friends' scores (You have punched 30 dudes in the head. Dave has only punched 26 dudes in the head. Go you!) and the way acquiring new powerups gives you the ability to solve puzzles in rooms that you've already passed through; this latter feature could have made the game annoyingly repetitive, but they managed to pull it off. One thing that's been said in reviews is that the novel "play in 2D but aim in 3D" shooting style is too hard to use - I found it a little tricky at times, but it didn't really bother me, and I appreciate that they're trying to innovate. I also found it weird that the cutscenes were all about "Hurry and shut down the reactor before it's too late!" but the on-screen text would then encourage you to noodle around looking for hidden objects. But really my main complaint about Shadow Complex is that it was too short - I got about five hours out of it, and it seemed to end pretty quickly. Maybe I'll have to start a new game and try to collect all the hidden powerups.

Oh, something else weird: The game has almost no plot other than "average guy accidentally discovers Cobra's secret hideout and becomes Iron Man", but apparently it is set in the world of Orson Scott Card's novel Empire. Reading the Wikipedia article reveals that the bad guys are some kind of ultra-left-wing faction out to overthrow the US government. Okay, whatever... but the thing that really bugged me was that their master plan was to nuke San Francisco. If you ask me, if the world was really going to be taken over by vegans with combat mechs and tofu-powered armor suits, don't you think that San Francisco would be their headquarters, not their first target? "Oh, fabulous plan Trevor, we just blew up the only place where you can get a decent organic soy latte. Now where are we going to put our base, Philadelphia? Hipster, please."

Okay, cheap joke, but still you have to wonder.

Why Ghostbusters is so damn frustrating

Ok, so I was kind of excited about this one. From everything I'd heard it sounded like a winner. The whole cast was back to lend their voices and it was written by the original writers of the movies. But the gameplay is repetitive, the saves and checkpoints clunky, and other than the occasional decent joke...not much fun.

Instead of the traditional "30 bullets in a clip" and then you need to reload system, you can only use your proton pack for a set amount of time before having to "vent" it with a different button press. Kind of neat and different but it also highlights another failing. The overheat status and your character's health are displayed on the pack which you can see because of an over the shoulder 3rd-person perspective. This worked very well for Dead Space, but here the displays here are tiny and nonsensical. I can never see what they read in the heat of battle, when I need them most.

Every location has it's own set of ghosts to kill and trap but they end up just being the same type of enemy with a different "skin." I quickly got bored with this. And then when you finish fighting with them, you find yourself waiting (too long) for the other characters to finish their dialogue so you can get on to the next part. I never know if I have to get to the next invisible checkpoint or just wait for them to stop rambling. So I guess my complaint is that there's too much of the excellent voice work.

I said the save system is bad because I can't ever tell where I'll be when I shut off the game and come back. I've always thought it was dumb that the 360 can't see that I only have one storage location (hard-drive) so yes, that's where I want to save stuff. Why do I have to pick it myself? But this game is even worse because of the annoying (and dire) warning every time you start the game that save data will be overwritten when I pick my hard drive as the storage device. It's confusing but it seems to be the only option if I want to continue my career.

This leads me to another rant about 360 games in general. Why do I have to babysit them by pressing A about 10 times just to do what I want to do 90% of the time and continue my solo career. Press A to start. Continue Career. Load Data. Yes, from the hard drive. Yes, I'm sure. Yes, I know it will automatically save and overwrite it. The only game of recent memory that bypasses all this stupidity is the Grand Theft Auto series. You pop in the game, go make a sandwich and when you come back your character is all loaded up and ready to go. How hard is that?

But back to Ghostbusters. I'm not sure how much more I'll stick with it when I have Prototype and Shadow Complex calling me.

Bits & Bytes

So, lots of stuff piles up when you don't write for a while. Sorry if this post is a bit disjointed. I've got a lot in my head.

I got a new Android phone and one of my favorite apps so far lets me be an Xbox Live voyeur. It's got the unfortunate name of 1337pwn but it lets you add anyone's gamertag and see their online status and recent history. Sure you can do that all on the xbox.com site but this app uses the Android notifications to let you know when people sign on in more or less real time. Do I really need to know when people sign in? No, but it's sort of neat. Also, since you can add anyone (even people you're not XBL friends with) I added stephentotilo and giantbombing, two of my favorite game writers from Kotaku and Giant Bomb, respectively.

I've noticed lots of bloggers cheating by reposting stuff they've seen on Twitter and thought I might do a bit of the same. Oh, and I got on MTV Multiplayer again. I think Russ Frushtick over there must have a similar sense of humor as I do.

Speaking of Twitter, here are some of my thoughts from there on Guitar Hero: Metallica

• In case you're wondering, Guitar Hero: Metallica is about 100 times more awesome than the Aerosmith one. Now back to rocking...
• Odd that my favorite part of Guitar Hero: Metallica so far is PLAYING SOME SKYNRD! ...(man)

And really, this game is pretty cool. I'm almost finished with the guitar career, I may play around with the drums or vocals. It's nice to have that option since I have the original Rock Band kit that works with it...I think. Come to think of it, I'm not sure.

I also briefly played Pikmin for Wii. This is a remake of the original Gamecube game that adds some new Wii-specific controls. Since I never played the original, I can't say how much it added. It seemed like a neat concept and nice art style. I actually felt like I let the little guys down when it told me I lost a few pikmins in battle at the end of the day. Maybe I just didn't give it enough time, but the game didn't really grab me. So I sent it back.

Speaking of disjointed, the reason I'm writing tonight is because the wife is using the game TV to watch the So You Think You Can Dance finale. I will never understand why this show is on two nights a week. For an hour or two. Every week... It's not that I hate the show or anything. There just seems to be way too much TRL-style Woooo!!!-ing.

I took a trip recently and played a bit of DS. I'm stuck on the fiend lord in Chrono Trigger so I played a bit of Geometry Wars: Galaxies. I think I like that game. To paraphrase a friend: "Get these shapes off my Euclidean PLANE!" The worst thing about it are the controls that make my hands hurt. So I may need to get one of them on the Xbox.