Tuesday, January 18, 2011

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.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

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.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

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.