Game Over(load) continued

I usually like to post here after I finish a game. I've been starting a ton of games but have only finished one. Even if I don't write about every game, I try to keep the list to the left current for what I'm playing (click through if reading through Google Reader).

For mobile games, Mario 3D Land is still pretty cool, but gets fairly tough after the first "ending." Mario Kart 7 is a great upgrade from the last DS game, and our DS Lunch group has been playing it for a couple weeks now. The only big complaint is that multiplayer matches are divided up into sets of 4 races. The last game let you play as many as we wanted and tallied the points as we went. Now we have to keep an eye on how many "sets" of 4 we think we can get in over lunch, and don't know who's the overall winner because we'll probably forget to keep track of who won the most of the 4 sets. My wife asked me how I did the first week we played and I didn't have a clear answer because of this. Did I "win" or not? Yes and no. (Also, yes, I realize she probably didn't care and was mocking me for playing a game over lunch anyway.)

Speaking of mobile games, I guess I could mention a couple iOS games I took for a spin. I say iOS when I really mean iPad; I find an iPod/iPhone too small to really see much of anything. For instance, I tried Jetpack Joyride on the smallscreen and thought it was dumb. On the iPad though, it's oddly addictive. Also, Mirror's Edge was pretty well done and is completely worth the 0.99 it's on sale for now. It makes good use of tablet controls like swipe and tap and doesn't make you deal with a stupid onscreen joystick.

I did finish one game, like I mentioned at the top. That was Rage for 360. It looked great and was a pure shooter. There was a story and some side stuff to do, sure, but it really shone when you were blasting through a bunch of crazy dudes with the fluid controls. I had a lot of problems keeping stocked with my preferred kinds of ammo, especially on levels where you only fought mutants, who don't drop anything. I had heard it was short, around 12 hours or so. Well I was about that far in, but only on disc 2 of 3. I got to what I realized was the end and was a bit confused. So after the credits rolled I popped in disc 3. Oh that's where they keep the multiplayer stuff. No thanks, I don't have XBL Gold and I had enough trouble with the computer controlled crazies.

No if you'll excuse me, I have to go spend more time with Skyrim. Or maybe Zelda. No, Skyrim...

Game Over(load)

About this time every year, every publisher on every platform decides they need to release every game they have in development. So we go from the summer doldrums to the fall overload. In the past few weeks I've picked up Rage, Skyrim, Gears of War 3, Zelda, and Mario 3D. And I'll be back to get Mario Kart 7 in less than a week.

Skyrim and Zelda were the ones I've been looking forward to for more than a year and they certainly haven't disappointed so far. The reviews of those two have been near perfect and from what I can tell, they've earned the praise. Zelda starts off extreeeeeeemly slow and assumes you've never played a videogame before, let alone a Zelda game. Also that you like reading lots of stupid unecessary dialogue. But once they introduce the controls, it seems to pick up speed. Skyrim builds on the great foundation that Oblivion built. The worst stuff is fixed and the best stuff is improved.It's an MMO without all those other pesky people.

Rage and GoW3 I picked up because they seemed like good games and they've been entertaining. Rage, in particular, is a lot of fun, moves quickly, and looks gorgeous.

Mario 3D Land should have been a launch title to really show off the 3DS' capabilities. It's pretty entertaining and finally gives me something to do with that system. I'm looking forward to next week when DS Lunch gets an upgrade to the new version of Mario Kart. Should be fun.

Zelda: Four Swords

Some of us took a very rare break from Mario Kart DS at yesterday's DS Lunch to play Zelda: Four Swords Adventures. Four of us, actually. Nice how that worked out. This was either free for everyone to download or part of the 3DS shambassador program, I don't remember which. Anyway, there were four of us with 3DS's today and that's what we played.

I had played through it on my own, beating each of the three levels to get a key that unlocks the last palace thing. It was basically a lobotomized version of Zelda when you play it this way. Sure you run around as Link with a sword and collect all the familiar items. But you can only have one at a time, and the whole goal was to get enough money so some chick (Zelda, I assume) will like you. That was about it for story, which made it kind of boring. Where it becomes a bit more fun is when you add 3 other live people, all racing to get the same rupees as you, while hacking at you and tossing each other off cliffs.

This was chaotic and sort of fun, but not very satisfying from a control standpoint. You move Link around like a slow tank and hope you get to the treasure first. It's not nearly as fun/chaotic as New Super Mario Bros. Wii, but it also came out much earlier than that game originally. Anyway, I didn't win any rounds and we can all agree that Kyle is a rupee-stealing jerk.

Rochard (PSN)

I picked up Rochard based on this review. And I haven't been disappointed at all. Also, when family walked by and asked what I was playing, I got to say that it was a game where you're sort of a "space trucker." Think Lonestar and Barf from Spaceballs flying around in their space Winnebago and you pretty much have the opening scene.

Once you actually get down to it, it's a sidescrolling platformer with physics-based puzzles. Really fun ones.

Deus Ex update

I've still been playing Deus Ex off and on. Mostly off. I can't seem to find time or motivation to play this one. Although I'm starting to get comfortable enough with it that it's clicking. I'm having a much more enjoyable time on "Tell me a story" difficulty setting (Easy). This makes it so I still need to sneak around, but if I mess up and someone sees me, I can probably get my way out of the ensuing firefight without dying.

Some other things that I've noticed: It can be very "video-gamey" since you can sort of see the programming in the AI. I can get X distance away from a guard before he'll hear me.They have almost no peripheral vision.You can be almost 90 degrees from them and they won't notice. They also don't notice doors that have mysteriously opened or closed when they weren't looking. All of this aside, I like the ambient music and sense of tension when you may be caught at any time.

I made it past my first boss battle, which I've heard a lot of people complaining about. I gameFaq-ed my way through it and don't feel bad about that at all. Especially since the entire rest of the game nudges you toward stealth and these boss battles are the opposite of that.

3DS Shambassador

So I got a 3DS. Surprising, I know, since I talked a lot about how worthless and overpriced it was. Well then they had a huge price drop within a few months of release. Basically something that's unheard of in this market. No one expected it. To appease the early adopters that paid full price, they promised 20 free downloadable games from the eShop. To get this, you had to connect to the eShop by the date that the price drop occurred. Sounds fine, right? Well, Wal-Mart, and later others, broke the date for the price drop allowing myself and other internet-savvy gamers to snag one at the new price and still get the free games. Hence the title of the post. Which I stole from the Giant Bomb (the site that I always link to for game descriptions) podcast guys.

Anyway, I spent some time with a few of the downloadable games.

Metroid:
I was excited to jump back into this one. This is probably the one game that I've beaten more than any other. In fact, I used to keep track of that very stat. On a file on my Apple IIc. I was up to over 30 on this game thanks to everyone's friend JUSTIN BAILEY. What? You don't know what that means? Basically it was part of a famous code to start you fully powered up near the end of the game. From there it was somewhat of a cakewalk to the end. Also, she was only wearing a swimsuit instead of the normal power suit. Saucy!
But it's a tough game. And sometimes it goes beyond "tough" to "just plain mean." For instance, it teaches you that lava is bad and will kill you. Except when it's used to hide a secret passageway later in the game. Also, there are several rooms where you are guaranteed to get hit by an enemy immediately after you enter based on the timing and pattern of them. And Tourian is just mean. It makes you go back and forth down a staircase type thing while avoiding those stupid Cheerios that keep appearing. Sure you could freeze a couple of them, but that doesn't last very long, and it's such tight quarters that you often can't get around them once they're frozen. And I haven't even mentioned how those damn Metroids love to pop up and swarm on you just as you're distracted by Cheerios. Also Zebetites. Screw them. Anyway, I thought I had plenty of energy tanks and missles to take down Mother Brain, but I died right before she did. Whatever, I'm done with that game.

The Legend of Zelda:
Have I said before that this is the best game ever made? Well it is. I need to write a post on why that is someday, but I grew up loving this game. The control pad on the 3DS isn't the best representation of the original NES controller. It's a bit spongy in comparison. And that's key when you're forced to make quick adjustments to get around pesky Ironknuckles or Wizrobes late in the game. But overall I found that I could breeze right through the game and I was pleasantly surprised how many of the secret locations I remembered.

Ice Climber:
This game sucks. Probably because I never played it when it came out and I'm not looking at it with the nostalgia-tinted glasses as some of the others. But really, the controls are slow and terrible.

Zelda II, The Adventure of Link:
I'm only through the first dungeon on this one and I don't know that I'll play it all that much farther. It satisfies the nostalgia itch like the others but I remember how difficult it gets later on. That might not be something I want to put myself through with the 3DS control pad and my age-reduced reflexes.

P.S. I typed this post using the iPhone Blogger app on an iPad with a wireless Bluetooth keyboard. Mainly just to see if I could. Not bad. I think if it was an actual iPad app it might be a bit better because then it could take advantage of the landscape mode and get rid of the onscreen keyboard that takes up half the screen.

Deus ex

I got this yesterday for 360. Played for an hour or so.  It's incredibly difficult.

Red & Blue

Outland was an XBLA game that I picked up a while back and have been slowly making my way through. I finished it not long ago and thought I'd mention it on here since it was really good and as far as I can tell, hasn't gotten a ton of press. It has a really cool visual style and the sound design fits in really nicely with it. In fact, when I started thinking about the game to decide what I'd write, the "starting a new section of a level" sound played in my head. You hear that a lot. This game also got my wife's approval as far as sound goes. She said it was "soothing" and didn't mind being in the room while I played.

Basically it's a side scrolling platformer (the controls are really tight) where a huge part of the game is based on switching your character from red to blue and back again. When you're blue, blue bullets don't hurt you, likewise with red. And you have to be the opposite color of enemies in order to do any damage to them. The difficulty scales really well, starting at super easy and getting to be pretty tricky towards the end. It's not uncommon to be toggling colors in mid air to get through some bullets and kill an enemy of the opposite color. Fun stuff.

My only minor complaint are a couple of the boss battles. They can be fairly long and you have to memorize lots of patterns. So you end up fighting them multiple times in a row. Well, I did anyway. If you have a PS3 or Xbox, you probably ought to at least check out the demo. I think it's something like $10 or $15.

Little Big Planet 2

So this post has been a long time coming. I finally finished Little Big Planet 2. I'd say 98% or so was done co-op with my wife. But the last level which is entirely fighting the last boss, is a pain in the ass. We tried probably 10 times and it was incredibly frustrating. You could tell what you were supposed to do but the crappy, imprecise, and floaty controls often prevented you from doing it. I finally decided to just finish this part on my own and not subject her to this bullshit.

So after another 10 or 15 attempts that involved a lot of yelling and smacking the table in front of me, I finally finished it. The ending briefly trotted out all the characters you'd met along the way and went right to some silly voice over and music while the credits rolled. The first song was one I actually recognized, Sleepyhead by Passion Pit and it fit in with the rest of the music for the series. Although after all the great music from 1, I was sort of disappointed with the comparatively bland stuff from 2 other than this song.

The big new addition in this game are the more varied creation tools, which I never used directly, but got to experience second-hand since they allow you to play mini-games that vary greatly from the normal platforming. The instances of this in the main campaign did a great job of being immediately understandable. Often your Sack Thing is piloting some sort of vehicle and the mechanics approximate an old school videogame like Space Invaders or Breakout. Also, note that they always refer to your character as Sack Thing instead of Sackboy like the previous. Sure it makes it open to be either a boy or a girl and the character is pretty androgynous anyway, but it's sort of jarring when you're used to one way from the old game.

The story in this one is even weirder and disjointed than the first. You meet several odd characters along the way, one for each group of levels. None of them were very memorable compared to the first game. In fact, it feels like they spent all their time making the new game creation tools (which I didn't bother to use), did a bunch of drugs to make a weird half-assed story, removed the cutesy stuff and called it a day. All of this together makes it sound like I hated the game, which isn't accurate. There were just some frustrating things and I guess I was just expecting more from a sequel to a game that my wife and I loved to play.

The Old Man and The Kid

I mentioned that one of the XBLA games I've been playing was Bastion. At first I thought I was more taken with Outland, which I bought at about the same time, but Bastion is really growing on me. I guess that makes sense, it's a game that relies heavily on your desire to collect!, upgrade!, and replay! The replay part of is actually my favorite so far. I started a New Game + immediately after I finished it because you get to start over with all your weapons and upgrades. Also, you make a couple binary choices at the end of the story that I'm sort of curious to see the effects of the opposite choice. Also, since I spent a good chunk of the original playthrough feeling underpowered and confused on which weapons (there are a lot) to use, I was excited to give it another go with a more powerful character and the knowledge of what weapons and upgrades I wanted to move towards.

Oh right, what kind of game is this? It's basically a top-down hack and slash with some RPG elements. The art style looks more sprite based than 3D-heavy, but it looks great. The story is purposely left pretty vague. You never even learn the name of The Kid that you control. The Old Man is your constant companion. Well, his voice is anyway. Think of it as a gravelly Tom Waits sound that narrates your almost every move. The amount of lines that guy had to record must have been insane. He'll often make reference to the fact that you have full health, what weapons you have equipped and sometimes just references to stuff you're doing. My favorite was him pointing out that "the Kid's smashing every bush he sees like there'll be some sort of prize." Basically pointing out the stupid video gamey concept of something like that.

This game is rich with different ways to play it based on all the weapon and upgrade combinations and it's as good as everyone says.

More Dead Space

You'd think, by all the posts about it, that I'm like, OMG so in lurve with the Dead Space series. That's not really the case. But since it's an EA property, they have the $ to put it on every platform out there. Anyway, I've really enjoyed 1 & 2, thinking they're some of the tightest, most polished games to come out on consoles in recent years. The concept of strategic dismemberment adds a new wrinkle to the tired "always aim for the head" strategy of most first person shooters. The weaponry is usually interesting and more inventive than "machine gun" and "bigger machine gun."

But outside of the core game series, there have been a few missteps with respect to control scheme. I mentioned that I played through the iOS version, and fought the touch screen the whole way.

Now I'm doing the same thing with Dead Space Extraction. This is a light-gun game, pure and simple. You have no control of where your character looks or goes. You just need to shoot and pick up powerups. Picking these up can be really frustrating because I'm used to being able to take my time and make sure I pick up every single bit of ammo. Often, the guy jerks his head (and your perspective along with it) around so much that you have a fraction of a second to pick up stuff. I'm not doing myself any favors by playing it without a light gun too. Oh, let me explain. This game just happened to be on the disc when I bought the PS3 version of Dead Space 2. It's a port of the Wii version of the same name. You're supposed to use it with the Playstation Move controller, which is pretty much like a Wii-mote, I guess. But I'm not gonna buy that thing just to play an essentially free game. So I mainly get by with a mixture of playing it on the easiest difficulty setting and cursing a lot.

Since it's on rails, I've run into a couple of spots where it got confused about whether I should continue on the path or not. Normally you don't move on to the next area and set of monsters until you kill all the ones in the area. But I've seen it get messed up where it tries to continue on but there's still a monster around that will kill you slowly from off screen. Since you're no longerlooking at it, you have to use area attacks like a flamethrower or similar that do damage to the area all around you. So there are a few bugs. Thankfully, the invisible checkpointing scheme is pretty good. When you get killed by stupidity like this you don't start very far back from where you died.

I was playing this a lot for a while, but lately I've been distracted by a couple of XBLA releases (Outland and Bastion) that I'll talk about in a future post.

Looking forward, not back

Usually how it works on here is that I play a game, gather my impressions, then write a bit about it on here. Since I haven't been playing nearly as much I can't really do that. Plus, since we're sort of in the dead period of game releases (seriously, no sports I care about and no games coming out?) I start to think about what I'm going to play next when it finally comes out.

Tops on that list is Skyrim. The fifth in the series and I only started at four. But that one was Oblivion and it sort of blew me away when I first played it. Coming from a Zelda background where you had a ton of freedom to go wherever you wanted in whatever order you wanted, this game took that and brought it to a whole new level. You could interact with just about anything in the world. I quickly found that I could pick up any of the items I found laying around. I held on to the rusty dagger or wooden spoon I found in a cave because I may just need that! Anyway, the game had some issues, but it was lovable all the same. Some of the videos for Skyrim look like a huge graphical leap, which is sort of impressive considering it's running on the same Xbox 360 as the previous.

Speaking of Zelda, Skyward Sword is coming at some point and I'm excited because it's more Zelda, and it will be something to play on the dust-covered Wii. Looking at those trailers for the first time just now I'm pleased with the art style. Looks like they took the semi-realistic look from Twilight Princess and threw in the bright color palette from Wind Waker. But nothing in there makes me salivate or anything. It will be more Zelda I suppose, no more, no less.

Rounding out the list are the 3DS versions of Mario Kart and Super Mario. But Dave, you say, you don't even have a 3DS and have been calling them "stupid expensive wastes of tech" or something like that. That may be true, but this blog is called DS Lunch for a reason and I'm pretty much obligated to get the next portable Mario Kart based on the hours and hours I've gotten out of the last one. Surely I'll be able to find some kind of a system/game bundle or something for cheaper by the time that comes out, right?

iOS games

I thought it might be neat to list a few of the games I've loaded up on my iPad. I haven't given up console games by any means, but sometimes a different sort of game will show up on iOS that I'll try out for a while. Most of the things I've found are the "play for a few minutes" type of game rather than "spend an hour or two" type of game. Except for Dead Space, I guess. That one encouraged longer play sessions like the console game. Unlike the console game though, the controls were frequently frustrating. I'm glad I played it though, especially since I happened to catch it on sale.

Tiny Wings, Fruit Ninja, Current, Simon Says, (couldn't find links), and Bumpy Road all sort of operate on the same concept of "play from the same beginning point and try to see how far you can make it." The better you do, the higher you score and the longer a play session lasts. There are no checkpoints for levels, really. This sort of game is unusual for me coming from the console space, where games haven't done this since the NES days. But it can be a refreshing change if you're expecting it. These three have great art style and sound design, just don't expect to be entertained for more than a few minutes at a time.

Continuity 2 and World of Goo tend to have "levels" and your you can only access higher levels by completing the earlier ones. Also these two are interesting little brain benders at times.

Words With Friends is unique in that it's the only one I play with other people. Even if it's asynchronous. It's really a perfect concept for a mobile game. I just wish it didn't make me feel so dumb sometimes.

Lastly, The Final Hours (of Portal 2) isn't a game, but rather an interactive article about a game. I loved Portal, so I got a kick out of this. It's also neat to see what's possible with this new medium of an internet enabled device that you're actually touching. The Wired.com app similarly lets you see a somewhat interactive magazine issue. Some of it is gimicky, some is neat, but it's interesting to see what designers do when they can actually can make the moving pictures newspaper that you see in Sci Fi all the time. Welcome to the future.

Need for Speed Hot Pursuit is the devil

I just realized that I was racing a course that I hated, in a car that I hated, in a race mode that I hated, while a song played that I hated. But I kept playing it because i wanted to get to other portions of the game that i really like. Well done NFS, well done.

L.A. Noire Incoming

Haven't spent much time with any one game lately, but I have a feeling that this might change that...

iPad Vs. Android tablet

I've been keeping an eye on tablets ever since my wife got an iPad last December. Sure, there's the venerable iPad; it's selling like crazy and legitimized a whole new product category. But I've really been rooting for an Android tablet to compete with it. The Galaxy Tab was an interesting size, but sort of a joke since it's just a slightly larger screen version of the phone I already have.

The Xoom and G-Slate sound great on paper since they equal or beat iPad on most all the specs. But I went and tried them, and came away unimpressed. While Honeycomb (the tablet-optimized version of Android) looks promising, there's almost no (non-Google) apps optimized for it yet. It feels very much like when Android 1.5 was only available on a G1 and trying to compete with the iPhone. But Android's main selling point has historically been that it was available on carriers other than AT&T. With most tablets sold being WiFi only, the carrier is largely irrelevant. I know there's no way I'm going to pay for a second data subscription when my phone (MyTouch 4G on T-Mobile) works really well as a wireless hotspot for free.

Another trend I've seen is that apps and games tend to hit iOS first, then Android later if there's enough demand. This is even more prevalent in the tablet space since iPad has such a head start. I think it has more than 70% of the market share at last count. I've played and enjoyed several great iPad apps while I've been waiting for anything compelling to come to Honeycomb.

A weird side effect of Apple's head start in market share is what it does for component prices. Since most tablets sold are iPads, they get better deals from component manufacturers, and can sell the device for a lower price. The Xoom was famously lampooned for being more expensive than a comparable iPad. While upcoming tablets from Samsung and others will soon fix this, as I write this, the iPad is sort of the "bargain tablet." If you can say that about a $500 toy that you probably don't need.

Finally, I've been able to compare Apple and Android WiFi implementations in a lot of different devices. In short, iOS devices do a much better job of finding and connecting to networks quickly and reliably. I'm actually surprised you don't hear more about this in the media. I doubt I'm the only one seeing this.

So you can probably tell where all of this is leading, but in the next day or two a new iPad arrives at my door. Actually, I'm taking over my wife's old one and she'll take the new one because I'm cheap and don't care about cameras. I may write another post about why I decided to get a tablet instead of a laptop, but it mainly comes down to portability, battery life, and instant-on. Also, I realized the only thing I need out of my laptop is to be an internet machine in my living room, not to run any specific software or games.

Image really has nothing to do with post

Since I'm sure you're wondering, "huh, what's that Dave guy been playing?"

I'm playing through Dead Space 2 again on a New Game+ so I can keep on using my powered up weapons and stuff. I started off strong but have been sort of losing interest in that one. Probably has something to do with playing the iPad version. Not nearly as good, mind you, but excellent for a tablet.

On the DS I've been playing Plants Vs. Zombies and Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes. Which is quite a mouthful, but really a lot like Puzzle Quest set in a bad Lord of the Rings knockoff story. It's fun and challenging. I actually found myself having to grind a bit to make it past some demon dude when I was only a few hours in. Most games these days do a lot more hand holding than that, so I was sort of surprised. And not necessarily in a bad way.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is nice. I can see Criterion's fingerprints on it. They made Burnout Paradise, which I absolutely loved. I don't love this one quite as much, but it's growing on me. I really miss the open world and the absence of loading times from Paradise. I'm starting to like it more since I'm slowly getting to the point where I'm unlocking the good cars which are a lot more responsive and fun to drive. In general, musclecars suck and Lamborghinis rule. But everybody already knew that, right?

For some reason, I decided to get a PS3 copy of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and play through it again even though I played the Xbox 360 version when it first came out. What can I say, I'm a sucker for SW even if the game itself gets ridiculously difficult and frustrating towards the end. That I found a copy for $5 didn't hurt, either.

So I'm splitting my time between whatever game grabs me at the moment. Oh wow, I almost forgot to mention that I also grabbed Portal 2 and played through the single player stuff while PSN was down. That game is fantastic and really deserves its own post. I played splitscreen co-op with my wife after she got tired of me asking her to play. Her arguments against it were that she "gets confused just watching me play, how is she supposed to figure it out actually playing it?" and that that she's really bad at using dual joysticks to move around in a 3D space (even without portals). She did fine, and the pointer system that Valve put in place for the multiplayer works really well. I don't know that I'd want to try it without at least voice chat though. I'm looking to finish out the co-op but I don't know if she'll be willing to play much more, so let me know if you want to play on Steam or PS3 now that it's finally back online.

Monster Tale

Yep, been a while since I canceled GameFly huh? Don't think I've stopped playing games. No, not at all. But I have been playing shorter amounts of lots of games. The one I've spent the most time with is, surprisingly, a 2D DS game that everyone seems to have missed. It's called Monster Tale, and I would have missed it too if it wasn't for it being highly praised on the last Brainy Gamer Podcast. He later wrote about it and said most everything you need to know.

Why do I enjoy it so much? Mostly because of the simple, Metroidvania gameplay, but also because you can tell it was developed by the same people that did the great Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure that I loved from a few years ago. I noticed the same juggling punch moves that Hatsworth had a lot of. You can make the monster guy take lots of different forms, but that's sort of overwrought since usually just punching a lot also gets the job done. Also, all the kids you run into and the art style can be a bit cutesy, but it won't get in your way of enjoying it.

So if you have a DS that hasn't been getting much use like mine was, this game might just solve that for you.

Cancelling GameFly

I've finally finished my silent fight with the USPS. Today I mailed back my last game from GameFly. I'd been thinking about making the split for a while, but looking over my queue finally convinced me to do it. I had only one or two released games on there that I was actually excited about playing. Other than that, the rest aren't coming out until much later this year. In the past, I'd use this time when nothing good is released to catch up on great games I've missed. There, uh, don't seem to be any.

In a recent post I talked about how I've gotten several new games lately, and I've been keeping myself busy with those. I actually love being free of my self imposed "YOU HAVE TO FINISH THIS SOON AND SEND IT BACK BECAUSE EVERY DAY IT SITS HERE COSTS YOU MONEY!" b.s. I suppose the bad part of this is that I sit and stare at my shelf trying to decide what I want to play for probably too long.

So long, GameFly. Surprisingly, I had been with them longer than I've been w/ my wife!

Enginerd

I mentioned that I was playing Dead Space 2, right? Well I'm really loving it. The zero gravity sections are fantastic, and somehow manage to not be confusing once there's no longer any up or down. But one little thing that made me laugh was this. See, you play as a fairly normal dude, not some amped up Space Marine. In fact, you're some kind of Space Engineer. And at some point in the game you're talking to this girl (I know, right!?) and he says, "no I'm not with the Space Marines, I'm an engineer." To which she replies "Heh! Nerd."

Love it.

PS3 explosion

In the last week or two, I've acquired several new PS3 games. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Little Big Planet 2, and Dead Space 2 are the new ones, and Fallout: New Vegas has only been on my shelf since Thanksgiving. Add that all up and I'm spending a lot of time with a Sixaxis DualShock3 in my hands. Between those (and using the PS3 for netflix blue rays and streaming) I've gotten so used to reaching for it that, other than a quick glimpse into Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 on XBLA, I haven't turned any of the other systems on. Well, unless you count my Android/iPod distraction with Words With Friends. And I don't.

New Vegas took hold of me slowly. I got bored in the much hated Freeside for a while, but after that I sort of found my groove with it. I was even ignoring my Gamefly game for one that I owned. Something I try not to do, since TIME IS MONEY when it comes to rented games. Speaking of that, I think I'm cancelling my GF account at the end of the month. As I looked over my queue, there's just not much I'm really excited about in the next year. And there's always the infernal USPS that hates me.

LBP2 is one of the few games that my wife asks to play with me. In fact, if I ever played it without her signed in as player 2, she'd probably divorce me. I don't think she could stand it if she knew I was collecting new costume pieces or changing my sackboy outfit without her.

Dead Space 2 is fantastic so far. I loved how polished and tight the original was, I figured this wouldn't disappoint either. I'd forgotten how bloody and gruesome it is though. Good thing there aren't any impressionable little eyeballs around when I play. As a bonus (and the main reason I got it on the PS3), Dead Space Extraction came included on the disc. I had that in my queue for the Wii anyway. It suffers quite a bit only using the PS3 analog stick instead of a real pointing device though. Maybe I could be convinced to buy a PlayStation Move if I can find any other decent software to play with it. Suggestions?

Finally Uncharted, the game that's been on pause for the last 20 minutes as I typed this. I was a bit worried that it would feel dated and wouldn't live up to the stellar quality of the sequel that my archives tell me I played about a year ago. No such worries should have bothered me. It's still a top notch PS3 game, so it looks and plays great. Fun stuff.

AssBro

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood looks great, and your character moves fluidly and intelligently. It's very closely related to Assasin's Creed 2, which was great, if not a little tedious at times. Too bad this one felt more like work than fun.

I think part of my problem with this one was that I was always a bit confused on what was the main storyline. I was dumped into the middle of a huge open world map (Renaissance Rome) with icons everywhere. I think the main storyline involved taking control of about a dozen Borgia towers, but I wasn't even completely sure of that. Taking control of these smartly combined stealth assassination of a certain person, then climbing a tower (and burninating it). This combines two of the main things you think of when Assassin's Creed is mentioned. But there were so many of the damn towers and they were spread out all over the place. I also seemed to spend way too much time fleeing to lose my wanted level before I could do just about anything. Another similarity to AC2 was my general confusion and lack of interest with the storyline. Go here, kill that guy, repeat. Whatever.

So, some of the new features of this one were the ability to command a group of assassins to do your killing for you, and an odd mix of stealth and speed for the multiplayer. I played for several hours, but didn't make a whole lot of progress towards the first, and got frustrated with the game before I got to the multiplayer. Sorry, AssBro multiplayer, I hear you're cool, but I couldn't stick around long enough to care.

blur

It's like Mario Kart. But with real cars.

Blog post done. Sweet!

You're still reading? Ok, I suppose I could say more about it. Sure there are Mario Kart similarities, heck, most of the powerups have direct equivalents to MK items. But since the game has a more realistic look, the powerups have more to do with electricity or technology than mushrooms or stars. But the use of real cars is a really nice touch. I've seen Ford, Dodge, Chevy, BMW, and a few others thrown in. I'm not sure how they get around not showing "damage" on these, but I guess it's mostly done with a health bar, smoke, and a dragging rear bumper than actual scratches and dents. From what I understand, game makers don't usually get to show licensed cars with a banged up frame, the driver's side especially.

The cars have stats that are either drifty or grippy and off-road or racing. The right or wrong car can make a world of difference on some tracks. And that's one of the things that make this game tough. I couldn't find any sort of preview for the tracks, so I mainly just guessed until I'd gotten last place a few times and knew what the course needed. Another thing that makes it tough is that you always start in the back of the pack in career races. You spend the entire time trying to catch the leaders. Then if you somehow manage to get to the front, you frantically try to use powerups defensively to hold onto your lead. Yet another tricky part is that the powerups aren't nearly as helpful as what you'd find in MK. This makes the game more based on skill rather than luck, but it can also suck out quite a bit of the fun if you're continually on the loosing end.

There are some other modes besides racing that give you a bit of variety, but they're tough too, and I didn't think they were as much fun. Believe it or not, I actually played a bit of multiplayer on this one. They have a decent matchmaking system where you're paired up with people that are theoretically as inexperienced as you. I didn't jump into this until after playing quite a bit of the solo career so I knew my way around some of the tracks and powerups, which helped me pwn some n00bs. Well, not really, but I did manage to win one, I think.

After writing all of these negative things, I've just about convinced myself to send it back to GameFly, but I may forge ahead a little bit more. When this game works, it's a lot of fun. I just have to slog through lots of frustrating and confusing stuff to get there. I just went and read Ryan's review and it convinced me to give up on the single player career (it is, as he says "freakin' hard") and stick with the multiplayer. Mostly because it has the Modern Warfare style level up system.

Next up is Little Big Planet 2, which should show up in the mail soon. My wife has been pretty anxious to play this one together. And she doesn't even know about all the crazy new game modes that they're making such a big fuss over. So it should be pretty cool.

UPDATE: After somehow winning 4 in a row on the easy leagues, I got a message from a guy I was racing.

"dude ur rlly good"

My response:

"nah, just played lots of Mario Kart"

Because a lot of the racing is countering others' attacks and MK teaches you that very well.

Bond, James Bond

GoldenEye 007 for the Wii is a strange game. It's based on a 1997 Nintendo 64 game that was based on a 1995 James Bond movie with Pierce Brosnan. This remake uses Daniel Craig, Bond for the current generation flicks, in a storyline that only hits the major elements of the previous game/movie. To say I played a lot of the original game is a bit of an understatement. That game and Mario Kart 64 were about the only games I played with my roommates at the time. Back then, split-screen multiplayer with only one analog stick was all we had.

Playing through the single player campaign after not playing the original for a long time was a bit strange. There were only a handful of times that I ran into a situation that seemed really familiar. The rest was mostly just generic shooter stuff. The exposition scenes happen mainly through a 3D computer display thing where M describes things that you need to do. Bond's smart phone plays an annoyingly central role in all of this. At one point I was walking around a dark nightclub looking at my phone's screen using a "facial recognition app" to find the person I was searching for. Snore.

I was intrigued by the Wii remote controls at first. It seemed to work pretty well, but I was having to try too hard on the first level to do basic tasks. Plus it forced me to hold my right wrist in a stationary position for too long. Propping it up on the pillow and leaving the remote pointed at the TV helped, but it was still a bit much. Then I spent a few minutes digging out my Gamecube Wavebird and controller plug ins. After some X and Y configuration in the settings, I had it functioning like pretty much any Xbox 360 first person shooter game. So, in short, I thought the Wii controls were neat, but to play the game for very long, I wanted something I was used to. And the ability to customize all of this to my heart's content was a really nice touch.

As I got towards the end of the campaign I started comparing the game to other shooters I've played on the 360 or PS3. As fun as this game is, it just doesn't hold up to even mediocre games on other platforms. The graphics suffer, of course, due to the Wii's less than favorable hardware. The AI of the computer players is pretty dumb. Or their movements are slowed down on purpose since the developers realized you'll have trouble hitting them with the Wii remote you're probably using. They pulled the classic trick at the end of the game: increasing the difficulty by throwing more dudes at you instead of adding any new gameplay mechanics or enemy types.

If I hadn't ever seen any 360 or PS3 games, this game would be pretty impressive. It even has a decent online multiplayer mode. And, as an added bonus, since the Wii has no voice chat you don't have to listen to squeaky-voiced 12 year olds going on about how they just pwned you. I don't know about you, but this happens to me a lot. My goal in an every man for himself battle quickly became to kill just one person before the round was over. My final count was something like 28 deaths and 3 kills. Woo hoo.

So it's a bit strange, but certainly worth playing. Even more so if you only have a Wii.

iOS & Android

Warning, there's very little videogame content in the following post. Just tech toys. There, you've been warned.

The only thing that I really wanted for Christmas this year was a new iPod. Of course, I was a bit more detailed than that on the link I sent my wife. I knew I wanted a refurbished 3rd generation 64Gb iPod touch (with a compass in the stock) since I have a lot of music and didn't care about a camera or higher resolution screen. I weighed several options over the last couple of months to come up with this, even considering sacrificing music storage for the convenience of only carrying one device, in a phone/music player. I've used an Android phone for a couple years now, and have messed with several different models, so I'm pretty familiar with the little green robot. But music is not something that Android does well at all, and I've always been impressed with the software and hardware on my click-wheel iPod.

Other than a bit of time with my wife's iPad, I hadn't really had much experience with iOS. Really, I can rarely ever pry that thing out of her hands because she's usually glued to Words With Friends and her Dragon Tattoo books on the Kindle app. I thought it might be kind of neat to write down a few impressions of iOS Vs. Android now that I've played with both.

iOS pros:

several apps that appear on both platforms are better here (ESPN scorecenter, FB, Twitter)

Official Twitter app rules (instant notifications, timeline postion saved, multiple accounts)

keyboard accuracy

touchscreen accuracy

iPod (much better music player and easily syncs with my > 100 iTunes playlists)

market and innovation leader (# apps in the market, interoperability with more sites/products, apps to Apple App store first)

more and better games (previously mentioned Words w/ Friends and Fruit Ninja are my favorites)

WiFi and sleep mode work perfectly together to give you an "instant on" internet device

"magical" (Heh, not really, but the UI is consistently easy to use and pleasing)

Android pros:

Notification system

Latitude & maps integration

Google integration

Best version of gmail

Reader app

Free navigation

replacement keyboards

replacement launchers

Back button (I hate that iOS has to use screen space at the top left to accomplish the same thing)

larger screens

choose your hardware

higher chance of finding a free app in the Android market than Apple app store

So this isn't mean to be an end all comparison post over which phone OS is better, and I'll probably be looking for a newer, faster Android in the next few months. Let me know if I've missed anything or have any questions. I could talk for hours about this stuff.

Insufferably Cute

"This game is insufferably cute."

"Be sure to blog those exact words" she says.

My wife is so helpful.

As soon as you land on the ground in Kirby's Epic Yarn, your see through character makes a slight divot in the fabric covered ground that you're walking on. This persists throughout the game. Whenever you go through a door Kirby makes the cloth bulge out like he's inside of a pocket. Cool looking stuff.

One of the neatest things about past Kirby games was the ability to copy your enemies abilities and use them as your own. In this new one you're given a nice set of things to change into, but you don't ever really gain any new ones as the game progresses. Outside of turning into specific vehicles in very confined areas, that is. Probably my favorite part of the old games was deciding which abilities I liked the best, then trying to hold on to it for as long as I could. If I had a rare ability somewhere that it felt like I wasn't supposed to, it sometimes felt like I was "breaking" the game. In a fun way. But it only happened if you were good enough to hold onto the ability by not getting hit by anything. So your excellent play was rewarded with being able to play the game however you wanted. That's something that feels missing in this game. Since you only have a limited set of powers I got bored after a while despite the unique and charming visuals.

I got to a point where I was sort of bored with the game, but continued on since A: I wanted to have more to write about and B: It was Christmas card season and I'm sure the USPS appreciated me not dropping another piece of mail in their box when I sent the game back to GameFly. But then again, screw them. They can't seem to get a game to me from Austin in less than a week.

Anyway, I hit a level that made me glad I'd kept playing. It was Melody somethingorother and it was all music-based. Jump on a giant drum or a symbol and a music note pops out with a gem to collect. Travel through a wind instrument and collect gems in a pattern based on a musical scale. Swing Bionic Commando-style on certain attach points to make a harp release it's notes. Interesting stuff.

I suppose this game could grab hold of you if you were playing it with kids around or were obsessive about collecting every little thing they threw at you. Neither were true for me.

But I couldn't shake the feeling that this game was made for four year olds. The visuals, the ridiculously easy play, and the very excitable narrator that sounded like he was reading a picture book to, well, a four year old all made me get a bit annoyed with it.