A short time with a lot of games

I accidentally got Castlevania: Lords of Shadow in the mail. Accidentally because it was one of those games I added to my queue when I first heard about it, and then forgot about it. It happened to come to me shortly after release and I thought "huh, I know almost nothing about this one." Don't look at me like that. You know you've done it with Netflix.

This just about sums it up perfectly, since I didn't really enjoy this game. And the thought of slogging through two discs worth of stuff that I didn't really enjoy made me a little bit sad. So I took the opportunity over a few days out of town to send the game back and have a new one waiting for me when I got home.

The new one was ModNation Racers and it's already in the envelope to go back. Not because it's bad. I sort of enjoyed the Sony take on Mario Kart. But because the game is broken. I think it's just my copy, because surely other people would have noticed if it locks up any time you try to go to anything but career race, right? I spent a ton of time downloading updates and patches for the game. It's a shame I didn't get to play it more.

On my trip I tackled a few newer DS games. Super Scribblenauts won for "most time consumed." I like it. But I cringe every time a level starts by flashing up "Adjective Level." I feel like you have to do some trial and error to get one of the three or four words the developers were thinking of to pass those. I need to try a few more of the action levels and try out the new, non-stylus based controls a bit more.

Alice in Wonderland (for DS) surprised me a bit. The art style is really original and the gameplay is mostly not boring. I probably need to put in some more time on that one.

Splinter Cell Conviction is on it's way next. Mainly because I hear you can effectively play the entire game by sneaking around and poppin' dudes in the head with a silenced pistol. Good times!

DS Lunch

Depending on who you are or how long you've been reading this blog, you may or may not know what the title signifies.

A FEW NERDY ENGINEERS GET TOGETHER TO PLAY NINTENDO DS OVER LUNCH AND TALK ABOUT VIDEO GAMES. I STARTED THIS BLOG THINKING WE'D ALL POST TO IT. BUT NOW IT'S PRETTY MUCH JUST "DAVE'S PLACE TO POST ABOUT GAMES."

That's how it started, of course. But it's sort of turned into my creative space to talk about something that I care about while emulating the style of some people that I admire. Lately I seem to have gotten in a rhythm of doing a quick recap of the game I just finished from GameFly. Maybe I feel some kind of need to justify the subscription cost in addition to playing the games? Anyway, I thought it might be fun to walk you through a typical day of a real DS Lunch. I don't even remember exactly how or when it started, but it's been going on for probably five years.

Every Wednesday, it starts by me remembering to bring both my DS and my lunch to work with me in the morning. Then at noon, we meet in a conference room, eat our lunches, talk about games we've been playing at home in the last week, and play DS. Typically it's about four or five of us (mostly engineers) but we've had as many as 8, which means all human opponents and no brain-dead CPU players in Mario Kart. Ninety five percent of the time the unspoken choice is Mario Kart. There have been a few other games that we try out, Tetris or Bomberman sometimes, but we always come back to Kart racing.

It's a rare game that has the perfect blend of skill, luck, and fun. It does lots of things right. I'm not gonna tell you that the DS version is perfect, far from it. Just today we were saying that the next version really needs to have a replay feature. Some crazy, improbable stuff happens when you have several people all out to get each other.

We do a lot of yelling at each other. Celebrating last second wins. Banging our heads against the walls because of last second defeats. For all of the people that schedule meetings in conference rooms nearby over lunch, or have offices nearby...I'm sorry. Well, not that sorry. We do keep meeting every week.

Prince of Persia: Forgotten Game?

I've mentioned to a few people how much I enjoyed Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. I must have since I got it in the mail, played all the way through it, and sent it back in just over a week. That's some kind of record for me. The platforming and combat were lots of fun. The difficulty was just right, and the story wasn't terrible.

I've heard some comparisons to Sands of Time thrown around, but I think I like parts of this one even better than that game. The combat from SoT seemed really frustrating at times. In this iteration, a lot more enemies are thrown at you at once, but you're also a lot more powerful. Plus, you're given lots of options on how you can dispatch them. So you can pick your favorite combinations. But speaking of combinations, this game's not too heavy on it. You aren't forced to remember ridiculous button combinations so you're freed up to hack and slash, use magic, or whatever works for you.

The level design is pretty neat, but you have to suspend your disbelief that all of the obstacles just HAPPENED to line up perfectly. You really can't spend too much time thinking about it, and just go where the game (not so subtlely) directs you. I found very few spots where I was confused on where to go next. And it does this without falling into the "rhythm game" mentality of the last game.

This game gives you a great mix of "do whatever you want" combat and "extremely directed" acrobatics. It also was hard to stop playing. I often found myself playing "just to the next checkpoint." Only to find myself saying that again when I got there.

Late in the game, the timing puzzles tighten up a bit and leave you less room for error. They don't seem impossible. Rather, they're just reminding you how far you've come. As an example, late in the game right before you open Solomon's tomb, I got to a series of jumps that seemed fairly easy for what I was used to. Of course, I had to back track and was now on the clock. It was ticking down while I retraced what was easy the first time through. Well played, Prince.

Of course, the big mechanic for this series is the ability to rewind time when you mess up a jump. You acquire that fairly early on, but it really takes a back seat to being able to flash freeze water. Horizontal water fountains become bars to twirl around, and waterfalls become solid walls to run across. Later on, it leads to some of the trickiest sequences of having to quickly freeze and unfreeze as you make your way across the obstacles. Almost as an afterthought, you get a "recall" ability to fill in sections of wall that are all Matrix-code-looking. But you can only do one section at a time. Often I'd forget that I had to use this on the thing I was standing on, turn it off and drop to my death. Whoops. I could have used some kind of slight visual indication that "this ground might not be entirely stable."

The title of this post refers to my sense that this game was largely ignored when it shouldn't have been. But I loved it. You might want to give it a shot too.

Port & Starboard

Whenever I go to an actual arcade, I end up spending most of my time playing something Star Wars-related or Hydro Thunder. It's basically a silly, over the top racing game. On the water. With ridiculous looking boats and locations. And I love it.

So when I heard about Hydro Thunder Hurricane coming to XBLA, I was immediately interested. I played the demo and thought about it for a few days. Was it really worth $15 even though the demo only let you try one track? Eventually I decided it was and I haven't regretted it.

The best part of the game are the controls. Everything just feels right when you're turning, jumping out of the water, and slamming back down. Some of the boats have quirky handling, but I mostly tried to stick to the one or two that I liked.

I hear the online play can be fun, I should probably try that at some point. But I have a feeling I'd get steamrolled by 12 year olds. Plus I'd have to listen to all of them. So maybe not.