Netflix, GameFly, and digital downloads

I signed for Netflix this week. Mainly because I realized that we have this fancy teevee and sound system that really only gets used for games. Not that there's anything wrong with that. :) My wife and I don't watch that many movies, but we always seem to have a list in the back of our minds of "oh yeah, I kinda want to see that." Now that list is in digital form.

But this has got me thinking about how a rental by mail service should be run. First off, a lot depends on that "by mail" part. I'm told we live in a city with a Netflix distribution center. Not true for GameFly. The result is that I have 2-3 day turnaround time on new movies versus about a week for games. Also GameFly doesn't ever seem to have any games ready to ship. Granted, most everything in my queue is fairly new, but come on!

Netflix also has this great thing called an Instant Queue. Basically, if the movie that's already in your queue is available to stream, it also gets added to the instant queue and is noted as such. You can watch it on your computer or via a Netflix ready device. Notice that PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii are on the top of this list? Since I already have these, it makes it a nifty way to get more out of both my Netflix subscription and the game systems.

So rather than waiting for GameFly and the cursed postal service to get me a game, why don't I have an Instant Queue? I could "check out" a copy of the fantastic Shadow Complex or Echochrome. That would save us unfortunate souls who don't live very close to a GameFly shipping center tons of time without a game.

Will digital game rentals become a reality? Apparently Sony is looking into it for PSP. And a bit of googling shows me that GameFly might be as well. I'm sure there are all sorts of problems this would create. But that's up to the game publishers and distributors to work out the details. I just want to play. Now.

Brutal Defeat

I was initially pretty excited about Brutal Legend. The 360 demo was fantastic. The heavy metal setting for the game had never really been done before. I had recently played Tim Schafer's other great, Psychonauts, for the first time. So it had a lot going for it.

Then the initial reviews came out. Lots of people were surprised how much of a real time strategy (RTS) game it was. It seemed to do a little bit of every type of gameplay and was only just okay at them all. But I forged ahead based on all the other things. Since the demo was just the first 15 min. or so, I still enjoyed that part of the game. As it quickly threw sqaud control and real time battles into the mix, I started to get bored and confused. I should have known. I've never really liked RTS games and consoles are sort of a terrible fit for them. I think the only ones I've ever really liked were the original Command and Conquer and the brilliant Lock's Quest on the DS.

So I played it for a few hours, but soon sent it back after talking with a friend that had played through a lot of it, heard my initial take on it, and figured I probably wouldn't grow to like it any more than I already did. So, sorry Tim, I tried.

Now I'm distracted again by the old favorites Burnout Paradise and Oblivion with some New Super Mario Bros. Wii thrown in.

Mass Effect 2

Marital harmony was a bit strained in our household this weekend, which probably has something to do with the fact that I spent, like, twenty hours playing Mass Effect 2.



Instead of writing a full-fledged review, I'll leave that to others (1, 2) and just list a few thoughts I've had while playing:

Story

• Mass Effect 2 is a better Star Wars movie than all three prequels put together. In fact, it's a lot like what you'd get if you combined all the best parts of Star Wars, Babylon 5, and Blade Runner. Their incredibly detailed and internally-consistent universe is a fun place to live (and blow things up).
• They kept the excellent "dialogue wheel" concept from the previous installment, and it continues to make all other games conversation scenes look primitive in comparison. The voice acting is really well done, and I was surprised by the number of famous or semi-famous voice actors they got (Doctor Evil's son! Charlie Sheen's dad! Trinity! Worf! That hot girl from that one show I don't watch!). The writing is pretty good for a video game, and these parts feel a lot like you're watching your own sci-fi movie, staring You as Heroic Space Guy.
• Like Fallout 3, you get a lot of chances to make "good" and "evil" choices - which they refer to as Paragon and Renegade - but I thought it was done a lot better here compared to Bethesda's offering, or even older Bioware games like KotOR. Instead of obvious differentiations like "save cute kitty / shoot cute kitty", they make it a lot more ambiguous, and if a "good" player takes the "evil" path now and again, it still fits well with the story. Hard to explain but if you play it you'll see what I mean.
  

Changes from the first game

• No more driving levels! This was one of the most tedious parts of the first game, so good riddance.
  
• The combat has been improved and the RPG elements have been toned down. Overall this makes the experience generally better, and I didn't really miss anything that they took away. It would be fair to describe ME2 as a shooter with strong RPG aspects, whereas ME1 was exactly the other way around.
  
• Each area is less spread out, and more densely packed with things to see, than corresponding areas in ME1. Again, this streamlines the experience and leads to less walking around.
• The texture popping issues from the first game are much less noticeable now.
• The new minigame that you do when hunting for minerals on uncharted planets is super annoying. This is easily the most tedious part of the whole game. Luckily you don't have to do it too often unless you're a completionist (o hai).
  

Combat

• The increased emphasis on use of cover during firefights suits the way I like to play RPGs... I've always been a "crouch and snipe" kind of guy. I do wish there was a way to stay undercover and go around the corner of an object you're hiding behind without standing up first, but that's a minor quibble.
• Allies are useful in combat, but they all seem to do pretty much the same thing - shoot or use their force biotic powers. I haven't yet had to use the squad-command features, or even really had to care about which two NPC characters I pick for my squad. Let's just say that the ally characters don't compare to what Valve did with Alyx in the Half-Life games.
• Sometimes Shepard gets stuck in the world geometry - usually on the corner of a piece of terrain, although during one battle I was blasted by a rocket and ended up with my head stuck in the ceiling like the Krazy Glue guy. To fix things that time, Ihad to reload from a save, losing ten minutes of progress.
• Does your guy even have a health meter? Occasionally I'm killed and am forced to reload, and other times I get the "omg u r about to die" screen effect and heartbeat-sound, but if I stand still for a little while my guy apparently heals back up and I'm on my way. Whatever, it's still fun and it keeps things from getting too frustrating.
• I was amused to find that hiding behind a glass wall gives you protection from rockets.
  

Anyway... look, a video!



Are you still reading this? Go buy/rent Mass Effect 2, already. You can thank me later.

Uncharted 2

I started thinking about all the videogame blogs that I like and realized most all of them focus on one theme per post. None of this rambling, distracted stuff that I tend to do since I don't post often enough. So this one is focused on Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.

I had heard several people say it was really good. And it didn't disappoint. The train level alone is worth the price of admission. Games have done train levels before, for sure. Run along the top, go from car to car, pretty standard stuff. But the way that your aim was distorted when going around curves and the incredible locations the train goes by make this one something brand new. I happened to listen to this podcast right before I got to the level. Manveer had some very glowing things to say about the level and how it will make future train levels hard for designers. The bar has been raised.

The single player story is the star here, and it's done extremely well. The characters actually seem human and the dialogue is entertaining. I felt like I really got to know Drake and the two ladies he spends most of the time with. When I thought I would have to choose between one of them to save towards the end, I would have had a really tough choice to make. Of course, there's some very cliché stuff in here. I really should have kept track of how many times one character was hanging off a cliff with one hand as another struggled to pull them up. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's right there on the cover.

I haven't played the first one yet. Does it blatantly plagiarize from Tomb Raider as much as this one? There's lots of ledge crawling and environmental puzzles to say the least. One level in particular took it too far. I pulled way too many switches, jumped across way too many gaps, and started up way too much ancient machinery just to open some silly temple. Speaking of that, big on the list of inspirations to the developers had to be the Indiana Jones movies.

I played a few rounds online. Just the co-op missions since I figured I'd just get killed immediately doing anything else. But they were well done and it seemed like the online stuff would extend the life of the game a bit beyond the single player campaign. So overall, it's a heck of a ride. If you have a PS3, this should be near the top of your list.

Infamous

Thought I'd drop in and leave a few words about my latest crush, Infamous. Although I think it's always written "inFAMOUS" in the game for whatever reason. Honestly, I didn't think I'd spend much time with this one after the first half hour or so. I wasn't impressed with the combat & controls. Not that it got any better, really, I guess I just got used to it. The main problem is that your basic attack that you use throughout the entire game just isn't much fun. You're presented as this guy with incredible electricity-based super powers, but you're stuck moving this tiny cursor around and shooting little wussy bolts at people. All the powerups I got (I played the good side of the coin, which may have been part of my problem) are too cumbersome or limited to really help. So you're stuck with your stupid peashooter-equivalent.

So why have I played it so much in the past few days? Not sure, really. The story is just okay and the open world city is drab, grey, and forgettable. I guess the draw is just the new twist on super powers and decent progression of events. Also your buddy Zeke provides decent comic relief. At one point he says that something "sucks donkey balls." So you've gotta love that.

So I mentioned that I picked one path of the whole karma/morality thing. Which you basically have to do if you want to make any progress on the upgrades. But the two things I really wanted to upgrade I couldn't. The peashooter that I already mentioned and your basic jumping ability. The city is so big that you want to get from point A to point B quickly. Surfing on powerlines and train tracks is new and sort of neat, but I found myself missing running up buildings and gliding like Prototype.

I know it sounds like I hated this game, but that's not the case at all. I'm just doing a much more thorough job of listing the things I haven't liked than the more difficult to describe parts that I did like. It's like Arkham Asylum in that I have a hard time finding a good stopping point. There's always "just one more thing" to do before I shut it off for the day.

So this is probably the worst blog post ever. I'm sort of distracted by The Jersey Shore on in the background, which I've never seen before. Okay, really distracted. This show is nuts. I gotta go.