I have no idea how one of my favorite companies of all time started with a game like Wolfenstein 3D. I know they made commander keen beforehand, and earlier wolfen games, but this is where they really became recognized.
And for what? One of the most godawful games I can remember playing.
It's not that I am biased against it because it's so retro, I still play and enjoy DOOM and that game is over 16 years old. But wolfenstein is one of those painful middle children between the arcade genres and what we know today.
And you can tell that just by looking at the "points" and "lives" system. You run around killing nazis and collecting treasure to collect points, and every so many points you get an extra life and the all so precious high score, but what's the point? Even on the leaderboards that the xbox live arcade has now, there's only so high your score can go for each level, and what's the point of extra lives?
I could see if you started off where you died, like most arcade games with this sort of system, but no, you start at the beginning of the level, with all enemies respawned, no ammo, no weapons, and 1 less life!
Why the fuck would you want to do that? Especially when you could just, I dunno, fucking save the game?
Speaking of saving, you end up doing that a lot, because they like to hide bad guys behind corners, and just one slip up could have even the weakest enemy doing anywhere between 1 and 50 points of damage with a single shot, and when you only have 100 health, that's a pretty big deal.
Yeah I know, 1 and 50, really random isn't it? The same is true for enemies as well, it could take anywhere from one to five or six shots to kill any of the standard badguys, with no rhyme or reason to it whatsoever. Remember, this is back before you could aim for the head.
And when every badguy takes more hits to kill than you it can get really fucking frustrating and tedious really fucking fast.
You remember that old windows screensaver that made a random maze for the screen to navigate its way through? That's what this entire game is like, only chopped up every 10 minutes for a reload. All the floors and ceilings are one boring ass color, and the walls are just tiles repeated over and over. Add that in to the random maze design of some of the levels, and you can get wicked lost very easily, with the only thing to lead you being bodies from badguys.
And the moment you let your guard down you'll walk past a corner you thought you checked and "SHUTZSTAFFEL!" BRAKA BRAKA DEAD-RELOAD.
Seriously, maybe if this BJ BLAZKAWHATEVER was running around in combat armor instead of his...tattered prison pajamas, maybe the game would be more fun.
And you can tell the developers thought the blind corners thing was just awesome, because one of the last levels consists of nothing but. Moving up a few feet so you can kill the guy hidden in a little alcove, and then turn around and do the same to his buddy before he kills you, is not fun.
But then I can't help but wonder, when this game came out, did we even realize what WAS fun?
I started PC gaming with DOOM, so I may never know. DOOM is so vastly superior in every way maybe I'm just not capable of looking back at Wolfenstein 3D without bias.
Hal
Monday, December 21, 2009
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Hmm
So I was just kind of wondering....why do the Xbox 360, Wii, and just about every game system since the dawn of time come with games, and yet, the PS3 comes with a movie.
It's like the goddamn creators forgot it was a video game console!
It's like the goddamn creators forgot it was a video game console!
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Robot Zombies
So maybe it's just because I've been unfortunate enough to work retail, but if there's anything more cathartic than plowing through hordes of zombies in a sports car that you just stole I haven't found it yet. Seriously. You have to kill fifty three thousand of the bastards to get the last in a chain of kill achievements, and I was entertained the entire way there. Of course it might have had to do with the fact that at any given moment my car could break down and I could end up in a poorly lit maintenance tunnel surrounded by the undead with only a baseball bat and my own two feet to get me to another parked car.
On an unrelated note: I've been playing a lot of kid friendly movie tie in games lately, partly because I'm a whore, and partly because I wanted something whimsical and entertaining that was as far away from mainstream gaming as possible. While I did find it with Kung Fu Panda, I very much did not with Wall-e, which is ironic because as movies go I very much found Wall-e to be vastly superior.
Wall-e fails as a game for one reason, its intended audience (kids) would never touch the game because it's so goddamn buggy and unlikeable that it actually makes you wonder what you could be better doing with your life until you shut the console off and wander outside.
My point can no better be summed up than level 7, "100% unsanitary," and while I heard on the internet that the last level would fill me with hair pulling frustration I found that untrue, and instead got bogged down on this one for the "finish it without dying" achievement.
The platforming isn't what's wrong with it, even though the control is terribly loose and slippery, it's that this level was designed by some sort of malicious prick that apparently hates children. It's based on the part of the movie where Wall-e ends up in the garbage dump of the axiom, and any strayance off of the narrow platforms results in instant death. The ground is slippery, Mo is beserk and shoving you around, there are rotating cannisters that you have to traverse with goddamn pinball bumpers in them that immediately catapult you into instant death soup, and then there's the assembly belt at the end of the level.
Earlier in the game you're told that red floors = instant death and purple floors = mild irritation, but here that goes out the fucking window. If you touch a purple floor even for a moment the game basically throws an unseen die to see if you're going to explode into a shower of kid friendly robot parts. That and if you so much as touch a wall or barrier it's game over instantly.
Why can't the buggy part be at the beginning? Why does it have to be at the very end of the level! I died so many goddamn times in this level I will have my route forever burned into my memory.
AND THEY MADE AN ACHIEVEMENT FOR NOT GETTING KILLED IN THE LEVEL.
It's a shame too, because free flying in the eve levels was actually somewhat unique and entertaining, but even they were long and tedious with glitchy instant deaths.
But in hindsight, it has made me look back more fondly on my time spent trying to beat call of duty 4 on veteran. In fact I may rent it again.
Hal
On an unrelated note: I've been playing a lot of kid friendly movie tie in games lately, partly because I'm a whore, and partly because I wanted something whimsical and entertaining that was as far away from mainstream gaming as possible. While I did find it with Kung Fu Panda, I very much did not with Wall-e, which is ironic because as movies go I very much found Wall-e to be vastly superior.
Wall-e fails as a game for one reason, its intended audience (kids) would never touch the game because it's so goddamn buggy and unlikeable that it actually makes you wonder what you could be better doing with your life until you shut the console off and wander outside.
My point can no better be summed up than level 7, "100% unsanitary," and while I heard on the internet that the last level would fill me with hair pulling frustration I found that untrue, and instead got bogged down on this one for the "finish it without dying" achievement.
The platforming isn't what's wrong with it, even though the control is terribly loose and slippery, it's that this level was designed by some sort of malicious prick that apparently hates children. It's based on the part of the movie where Wall-e ends up in the garbage dump of the axiom, and any strayance off of the narrow platforms results in instant death. The ground is slippery, Mo is beserk and shoving you around, there are rotating cannisters that you have to traverse with goddamn pinball bumpers in them that immediately catapult you into instant death soup, and then there's the assembly belt at the end of the level.
Earlier in the game you're told that red floors = instant death and purple floors = mild irritation, but here that goes out the fucking window. If you touch a purple floor even for a moment the game basically throws an unseen die to see if you're going to explode into a shower of kid friendly robot parts. That and if you so much as touch a wall or barrier it's game over instantly.
Why can't the buggy part be at the beginning? Why does it have to be at the very end of the level! I died so many goddamn times in this level I will have my route forever burned into my memory.
AND THEY MADE AN ACHIEVEMENT FOR NOT GETTING KILLED IN THE LEVEL.
It's a shame too, because free flying in the eve levels was actually somewhat unique and entertaining, but even they were long and tedious with glitchy instant deaths.
But in hindsight, it has made me look back more fondly on my time spent trying to beat call of duty 4 on veteran. In fact I may rent it again.
Hal
Friday, June 05, 2009
If all your game has going for it is your name on the cover, you should probably just pack it in.
So, Jericho.
First off let me start out by saying I generally steer clear of games with the artist named stamped on it like, "American McGee's Alice," because that generally means some arrogant twat bossed around the people that actually made the game, which generally means the game is garbage (I'm looking at you Itagaki), but from what I heard the game was piss easy and not THAT bad, so I figured what the hell, easy achievements, it's not like I'm gonna buy the thing.
Is it THAT bad? I'm sorry to say, but yes, it really is.
First off, the writing is god awful. I'd blame Clive Barker and his blood 'n guts but no plot mentality but I'm not convinced he had anything to do with this mess of a plotline. The game literally plays out like a goth obsessed fan fiction writing highschooler's notebook full of a bunch of shit he thought was awesome. It's shallow, yet murky, contradictory and for lack of a better word, pants on head retarded. For what it's worth there's a lot of backstory about all the characters that you unlock via the achievements, but most of it is complete and utter tripe that just ends up making you hate the horribly unlikeable characters even more. Trust me, if you don't hate them in the beginning, by the time you hear them gurgle their completely out of place macho cornball one liners for the thousandth time, you damn well will.
The only saving grace of their horrible presence is that half of them get brutally murdered in the final few minutes, which is good, because the ending is just BAM, bad guy is dead here's a nice ocean scene. I mean it's a pretty nice water texture, but by no means is it any sort of CLOSURE or RESOLUTION. I kept waiting for something that would make the ending less rediculously bad, but it never came.
Combat is repetetive, piss easy and mundane. Switching between your squad mates via your own spectral presence is a neat mechanic and would lead to some interesting puzzle possibilities, if the game didn't hold your hand the entire way through like a toddler. Explain to me what the point of a puzzle even is if they walk you through it step by step as it is happening? I guess if you couldn't read it would be a challenge. To top it off aside from every now and then when you get seperated there is almost no reason to use anyone besides the squad mate with the rifle/grenade launcher.
The piss easy difficulty doesn't make the repetetive respawning enemies any more interesting either, which makes me boggle at the fact that cheat codes were a pre-order incentive. When a hundred or so enemies filter 1-3 at a time out of 1-3 holes in the ground and wait for you to clear a room before spawning more, that's not a challenge, that's a test of your endurance to bad gameplay design.
There's no health and no ammo really. I mean there is health, but it regenerates if you don't get hit and you get respanwed if you die, and there is ammo, but one of your squad buddies is constantly replenishing it, so it makes you wonder why they even bothered with either of the mechanics. Just give the player infinite ammo from the get go (with mags that need to be reloaded) spawn tons of enemies (all at once) and let him have at it with his 10 or so squad mates. NOW THAT IS A GAME.
Oh, the game is also short, but in this case that is almost a mercy. You can only walk through so many brown bloody cooridoors before they all start to blend together. Fighting the same four or five monster types ad nauseam from start to finish.
Oh did I mention the quicktime events? OHHH BOY, these fuckers are the icing on the shit sundae. Don't think God of War, think more along the lines of Dragon's Lair, that horrible quarter eating monstrosity of a game. Zero reaction time and out of nowhere when you least expect them. If they're going to be there, at least make them a stable part of gameplay, instead of just a dick move every now and then to kill you over and over until you get it right. If there was any flow or atmosphere to the game, crap like this would destroy it utterly.
Is it worth a rental despite the horrible game design? Maybe if you're an achievement whore or you love Clive Barker's narrative abortions. I'm the former if you hadn't guessed.
But I mean hell, Twighlight was crap and it still found a niche market, so someone out there will probably like this too.
Hal
First off let me start out by saying I generally steer clear of games with the artist named stamped on it like, "American McGee's Alice," because that generally means some arrogant twat bossed around the people that actually made the game, which generally means the game is garbage (I'm looking at you Itagaki), but from what I heard the game was piss easy and not THAT bad, so I figured what the hell, easy achievements, it's not like I'm gonna buy the thing.
Is it THAT bad? I'm sorry to say, but yes, it really is.
First off, the writing is god awful. I'd blame Clive Barker and his blood 'n guts but no plot mentality but I'm not convinced he had anything to do with this mess of a plotline. The game literally plays out like a goth obsessed fan fiction writing highschooler's notebook full of a bunch of shit he thought was awesome. It's shallow, yet murky, contradictory and for lack of a better word, pants on head retarded. For what it's worth there's a lot of backstory about all the characters that you unlock via the achievements, but most of it is complete and utter tripe that just ends up making you hate the horribly unlikeable characters even more. Trust me, if you don't hate them in the beginning, by the time you hear them gurgle their completely out of place macho cornball one liners for the thousandth time, you damn well will.
The only saving grace of their horrible presence is that half of them get brutally murdered in the final few minutes, which is good, because the ending is just BAM, bad guy is dead here's a nice ocean scene. I mean it's a pretty nice water texture, but by no means is it any sort of CLOSURE or RESOLUTION. I kept waiting for something that would make the ending less rediculously bad, but it never came.
Combat is repetetive, piss easy and mundane. Switching between your squad mates via your own spectral presence is a neat mechanic and would lead to some interesting puzzle possibilities, if the game didn't hold your hand the entire way through like a toddler. Explain to me what the point of a puzzle even is if they walk you through it step by step as it is happening? I guess if you couldn't read it would be a challenge. To top it off aside from every now and then when you get seperated there is almost no reason to use anyone besides the squad mate with the rifle/grenade launcher.
The piss easy difficulty doesn't make the repetetive respawning enemies any more interesting either, which makes me boggle at the fact that cheat codes were a pre-order incentive. When a hundred or so enemies filter 1-3 at a time out of 1-3 holes in the ground and wait for you to clear a room before spawning more, that's not a challenge, that's a test of your endurance to bad gameplay design.
There's no health and no ammo really. I mean there is health, but it regenerates if you don't get hit and you get respanwed if you die, and there is ammo, but one of your squad buddies is constantly replenishing it, so it makes you wonder why they even bothered with either of the mechanics. Just give the player infinite ammo from the get go (with mags that need to be reloaded) spawn tons of enemies (all at once) and let him have at it with his 10 or so squad mates. NOW THAT IS A GAME.
Oh, the game is also short, but in this case that is almost a mercy. You can only walk through so many brown bloody cooridoors before they all start to blend together. Fighting the same four or five monster types ad nauseam from start to finish.
Oh did I mention the quicktime events? OHHH BOY, these fuckers are the icing on the shit sundae. Don't think God of War, think more along the lines of Dragon's Lair, that horrible quarter eating monstrosity of a game. Zero reaction time and out of nowhere when you least expect them. If they're going to be there, at least make them a stable part of gameplay, instead of just a dick move every now and then to kill you over and over until you get it right. If there was any flow or atmosphere to the game, crap like this would destroy it utterly.
Is it worth a rental despite the horrible game design? Maybe if you're an achievement whore or you love Clive Barker's narrative abortions. I'm the former if you hadn't guessed.
But I mean hell, Twighlight was crap and it still found a niche market, so someone out there will probably like this too.
Hal
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Ginsu built to last.
So...Before I get into anything else, Assassin's Creed, finished it recently. This game, all its other merits and drawbacks aside, is something like a metallica/tool song, or a gunslinger novel, or a lord of the rings movie. It takes an interesting idea or concept and reuses it over and over and fucking over again until it's no longer interesting or fun and then proceeds to beat the ever loving shit out of the mangled corpse of the original idea.
Long story short, Assassin's Creed is repetitive as fuck. Think: Math assignment repetitive and you wont even know the half of it.
The game is built on fun game play and interesting mechanics. The control is fluid for the most part, and assassinating people and fleeing from guards is genuinely tense and satisfying, it's all the other menial tasks you have to do to work up to the meat of the game play that is the problem.
Oh and don't even get me started on the flag collecting achievement. Seriously....100 hidden flags in each zone? COME THE FUCK ON GUYS. It's like the devil's version of Easter!
Genuine stealth+action game cliche tropes aside, how the hell can this man scale impossible heights and disable 12 armed guards in a single fight and yet he can't even swim? I realize he's wearing half a crusades era cutlery set in his gear, but if that's the issue how the hell is he able to stay concealed from the local guards?
After all the repetitive crap, the actual assassinations are such a small part of the game that they might as well have called it something else entirely.
Also the story is...questionable at best. You know something is going to be up when the game has a "made by a team of various religious backgrounds and beliefs" disclaimer before the title cinematic.
SPOILERS: You meet a lot of people of various religious backgrounds and beliefs, and then you stab them to death.
Hal
Long story short, Assassin's Creed is repetitive as fuck. Think: Math assignment repetitive and you wont even know the half of it.
The game is built on fun game play and interesting mechanics. The control is fluid for the most part, and assassinating people and fleeing from guards is genuinely tense and satisfying, it's all the other menial tasks you have to do to work up to the meat of the game play that is the problem.
Oh and don't even get me started on the flag collecting achievement. Seriously....100 hidden flags in each zone? COME THE FUCK ON GUYS. It's like the devil's version of Easter!
Genuine stealth+action game cliche tropes aside, how the hell can this man scale impossible heights and disable 12 armed guards in a single fight and yet he can't even swim? I realize he's wearing half a crusades era cutlery set in his gear, but if that's the issue how the hell is he able to stay concealed from the local guards?
After all the repetitive crap, the actual assassinations are such a small part of the game that they might as well have called it something else entirely.
Also the story is...questionable at best. You know something is going to be up when the game has a "made by a team of various religious backgrounds and beliefs" disclaimer before the title cinematic.
SPOILERS: You meet a lot of people of various religious backgrounds and beliefs, and then you stab them to death.
Hal
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Sigh...
[Edit] So Darius Twin basically has the most schizophrenic difficulty curve of any game I have ever played. I can literally make it from the first to last level without losing a single life and then at the last level it's like BAM: FISH EVERYWHERE. (It's a shoot-em-up where all the enemy ships are some form of sea life) Seriously, all the levels but the last are total snore fests and the last is insanely challenging. Or at least they seem like snore fests due to the ridiculously overpowered shield weapon that the last level will have absolutely no shit from.
[End Edit]
So I flipped through Sydlexia's "Top 100 SNES games" looking for something I might've missed that I should play, (flipping through taking about an hour) and it's pretty decent, aside from the fact that they make no mention of ROBOTREK. Which is arguably one of the best RPGs I played on the SNES, and that's saying a lot considering the SNES was pretty much the golden age for RPGs.
Then again only about twenty thousand people in North America even bought the game, and my mom was probably the only one of those in Michigan.
Hal
[End Edit]
So I flipped through Sydlexia's "Top 100 SNES games" looking for something I might've missed that I should play, (flipping through taking about an hour) and it's pretty decent, aside from the fact that they make no mention of ROBOTREK. Which is arguably one of the best RPGs I played on the SNES, and that's saying a lot considering the SNES was pretty much the golden age for RPGs.
Then again only about twenty thousand people in North America even bought the game, and my mom was probably the only one of those in Michigan.
Hal
Taking a few steps back to better days.
Every "next generation" console at my fingertips and what do I spend all day playing? A bunch of games from the mid nineties!
Yes, thanks to an odd stroke of luck, I currently have neither of my gamefly rentals with me any longer, and with 3-4 days before I receive a new rental I've been left at a loss as to where my gaming needs should be fulfilled.
Luckily, thanks to the power of the internet and current age technology, I can go back and play all the older games I own despite their respective systems being in relative disrepair. Just playing some of these games makes me want to buy some diet mountain dew and invite some friends over. Which brings a tear to my eye because most of my friends have "grown up." If you can call it that.
I wish I could find my old SNES carts too, I've seen some of them selling on ebay for 2-3 times what you'd spend for a brand new game! I've always had the understanding that some of them "loan vanished" (I'm looking at you secret of mana/chrono trigger, though I'm not going to name names.)(*cough*mariokart/pokemonpuzzle*cough*) but most of them have likely been packed away sadly into the collection of things I no longer mess around with because of broken and age-deathed technology.
One of these days someone is going to make something (and through a stroke of sheer genius do it legally) that can emulate every game system ever made so we can all go back and play all the good ones. Oh wait it's called a PC. My bad.
Anyways!
So I play through and beat the first 3 megaman games for the NES (megaman 3 is the best by the way) and I get to thinking, man I wonder if they have a genesis emulator? I missed out on a lot of those games when I was little, because we were mostly a Nintendo household (there's a reason sega lost the console wars), and genesis games were reserved for rentals.
So they do it turns out, and it's a really nice little program that even emulates the static snow screen when you don't have a "cart" loaded into the system.
So I get to playing Bio Hazard Battle, because of all the genesis games I remember, this is the first that comes to mind every time I think about the system. It's a pretty fantastic side scrolling SHMUP, and it manages to be both sublimely difficult (even on easy) and yet not retardedly unforgiving like R-Type (seriously, why even have lives if you start the whole level over every time you die? That's not another life, that's a continue.)
It's not without its flaws however. Your alt fire weapon thing spins wildly around your ship whenever you move, making all but the homing weapon nearly useless until you get extremely proficient, and it's a committer of the age old sin of replacing all your awesome collected weaponry with some random wimpy bubbles because you couldn't avoid picking up the wrong color orb.
But the music, the level/monster design, hell even the story, all of it is just amazing, which more than makes up for any minor quirks or bad design. Can't say that about too many games.
The whole organic ships/enemies and doom and gloom background music is just fantastic.
But even then...sometimes things are a bit off....take this for example:
Is it just me or does that enemy look like some guy's hairy ballsack?
Hal
Yes, thanks to an odd stroke of luck, I currently have neither of my gamefly rentals with me any longer, and with 3-4 days before I receive a new rental I've been left at a loss as to where my gaming needs should be fulfilled.
Luckily, thanks to the power of the internet and current age technology, I can go back and play all the older games I own despite their respective systems being in relative disrepair. Just playing some of these games makes me want to buy some diet mountain dew and invite some friends over. Which brings a tear to my eye because most of my friends have "grown up." If you can call it that.
I wish I could find my old SNES carts too, I've seen some of them selling on ebay for 2-3 times what you'd spend for a brand new game! I've always had the understanding that some of them "loan vanished" (I'm looking at you secret of mana/chrono trigger, though I'm not going to name names.)(*cough*mariokart/pokemonpuzzle*cough*) but most of them have likely been packed away sadly into the collection of things I no longer mess around with because of broken and age-deathed technology.
One of these days someone is going to make something (and through a stroke of sheer genius do it legally) that can emulate every game system ever made so we can all go back and play all the good ones. Oh wait it's called a PC. My bad.
Anyways!
So I play through and beat the first 3 megaman games for the NES (megaman 3 is the best by the way) and I get to thinking, man I wonder if they have a genesis emulator? I missed out on a lot of those games when I was little, because we were mostly a Nintendo household (there's a reason sega lost the console wars), and genesis games were reserved for rentals.
So they do it turns out, and it's a really nice little program that even emulates the static snow screen when you don't have a "cart" loaded into the system.
So I get to playing Bio Hazard Battle, because of all the genesis games I remember, this is the first that comes to mind every time I think about the system. It's a pretty fantastic side scrolling SHMUP, and it manages to be both sublimely difficult (even on easy) and yet not retardedly unforgiving like R-Type (seriously, why even have lives if you start the whole level over every time you die? That's not another life, that's a continue.)
It's not without its flaws however. Your alt fire weapon thing spins wildly around your ship whenever you move, making all but the homing weapon nearly useless until you get extremely proficient, and it's a committer of the age old sin of replacing all your awesome collected weaponry with some random wimpy bubbles because you couldn't avoid picking up the wrong color orb.
But the music, the level/monster design, hell even the story, all of it is just amazing, which more than makes up for any minor quirks or bad design. Can't say that about too many games.
The whole organic ships/enemies and doom and gloom background music is just fantastic.
But even then...sometimes things are a bit off....take this for example:
Is it just me or does that enemy look like some guy's hairy ballsack?
Hal
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Now I know how metal gear solid fans feel.
Let's talk about shitty games for a moment.
So, I rented Condemned 2 because I enjoyed the story in the first. Now before I say anything else, when I first heard they added multiplayer to this game, my gut told me that they shit the game up big time, but I ignored my common sense (and indeed everyone else on the internet) and rented it anyways because I wanted to know what happened with the story.
And let me tell you, as a writer, and an avid reader, playing a horrible game for the sake of the story is like reading a book that upon completing a chapter, leaps from your hands and smashes you in the genitals. (see: title)
So in the first chapter I immediately know something is wrong. The x axis on the controller is smooth, but the y axis flows like Methuselah covered in tar, covered in shit. Since there's only one option to change the movement speed of all axis, you just have to live with it. Whatever, mild inconvenience.
Anyone who read my debrief on the first condemned knows that I'm not a huge fan of the major selling point, which is the horrible melee combat that the game emphasizes. Condemned 2 takes it a step further and adds combos and quick time events to the mix to further shit it up. There are literally ten or so attacks all bound in to three buttons, and God help you if you double tap attack in the frantic mess of things because it starts you into a quick time event maelstrom, which if you fail, opens you up to getting mauled by whatever you were fighting. It ends up feeling like they tried to stuff street fighter in on the same disc with FEAR.
Speaking of FEAR, just from looking at the game it's pretty obvious they built the game in the same engine, which also had melee combat which was shitty, but you didn't need to use it because THERE WERE GUNS. (fucking awesome gunplay I might add.)
Now towards the end of the game you start picking up a lot more guns, but that just takes it from horrible melee combat to horrible shooting game. Since you can only take 3-4 hits before keeling over dead, and most of your enemies have automatics, it actually makes the game LESS enjoyable.
I'm all for realism. My guy can only take a couple whacks from a baseball bat? Makes sense. My guy can only melee attack poorly? Fine, I grudgingly accept that he's not a fighting champ. My guy can't carry thousands of rounds? Makes sense. Darkening vision? Well I'm a hallucinating drunk, I guess that makes sense. Zergling type enemies that kill you in a few hits at melee range? Sure why not. All this shit at once? Fuck you! It's realistic but IT'S NOT GODDAMN FUN ANYMORE.
It ends up becoming sort of a trial and error game, which even a little kid can tell you, isn't fun. This isn't the arcade, I'm not putting quarters into my xbox. There's simply no way you're going to avoid getting mauled to death by a crackfiend in two seconds when he spawns behind you in the dark unless you've already done it! The first "run away or die" sequence is also lame and arcadeish feeling, instead of frigteningly tense and fun like it should've been.
IF YOU SPEND 90% OF THE GAME PISSED OFF YOU CAN'T GET INTO THE ATMOSPHERE OR BE SCARED.
According to the wikipedia article, SEGA only published this game, but I am convinced they had their filthy fucking hands in it. Monolith has made plenty of shitty games, but not like this. This has that arcade "hasn't progressed since 1985" feel to it that SEGA has always had.
SEGA thought that they could revitalize sonic the hedgehog by giving a hedgehog guns, so it only makes sense that someone in SEGA leaned over to a guy in monolith and said, "Hey more guns makes it better!" and they shit all over the atmosphere established in the first game. Only someone with absolutely no idea what made them popular in the first place would do what has been done to condemned 2.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, the story isn't AS bad as yahtzee says it is, though it is by no means as good as the first, or even good on its own. There is no mention of mystical cults, and you don't "shout at the end boss until his head explodes." Though everything else he says is pretty much accurate.
In summation: No pacing + No plot + No balance = No fun.
Hal
So, I rented Condemned 2 because I enjoyed the story in the first. Now before I say anything else, when I first heard they added multiplayer to this game, my gut told me that they shit the game up big time, but I ignored my common sense (and indeed everyone else on the internet) and rented it anyways because I wanted to know what happened with the story.
And let me tell you, as a writer, and an avid reader, playing a horrible game for the sake of the story is like reading a book that upon completing a chapter, leaps from your hands and smashes you in the genitals. (see: title)
So in the first chapter I immediately know something is wrong. The x axis on the controller is smooth, but the y axis flows like Methuselah covered in tar, covered in shit. Since there's only one option to change the movement speed of all axis, you just have to live with it. Whatever, mild inconvenience.
Anyone who read my debrief on the first condemned knows that I'm not a huge fan of the major selling point, which is the horrible melee combat that the game emphasizes. Condemned 2 takes it a step further and adds combos and quick time events to the mix to further shit it up. There are literally ten or so attacks all bound in to three buttons, and God help you if you double tap attack in the frantic mess of things because it starts you into a quick time event maelstrom, which if you fail, opens you up to getting mauled by whatever you were fighting. It ends up feeling like they tried to stuff street fighter in on the same disc with FEAR.
Speaking of FEAR, just from looking at the game it's pretty obvious they built the game in the same engine, which also had melee combat which was shitty, but you didn't need to use it because THERE WERE GUNS. (fucking awesome gunplay I might add.)
Now towards the end of the game you start picking up a lot more guns, but that just takes it from horrible melee combat to horrible shooting game. Since you can only take 3-4 hits before keeling over dead, and most of your enemies have automatics, it actually makes the game LESS enjoyable.
I'm all for realism. My guy can only take a couple whacks from a baseball bat? Makes sense. My guy can only melee attack poorly? Fine, I grudgingly accept that he's not a fighting champ. My guy can't carry thousands of rounds? Makes sense. Darkening vision? Well I'm a hallucinating drunk, I guess that makes sense. Zergling type enemies that kill you in a few hits at melee range? Sure why not. All this shit at once? Fuck you! It's realistic but IT'S NOT GODDAMN FUN ANYMORE.
It ends up becoming sort of a trial and error game, which even a little kid can tell you, isn't fun. This isn't the arcade, I'm not putting quarters into my xbox. There's simply no way you're going to avoid getting mauled to death by a crackfiend in two seconds when he spawns behind you in the dark unless you've already done it! The first "run away or die" sequence is also lame and arcadeish feeling, instead of frigteningly tense and fun like it should've been.
IF YOU SPEND 90% OF THE GAME PISSED OFF YOU CAN'T GET INTO THE ATMOSPHERE OR BE SCARED.
According to the wikipedia article, SEGA only published this game, but I am convinced they had their filthy fucking hands in it. Monolith has made plenty of shitty games, but not like this. This has that arcade "hasn't progressed since 1985" feel to it that SEGA has always had.
SEGA thought that they could revitalize sonic the hedgehog by giving a hedgehog guns, so it only makes sense that someone in SEGA leaned over to a guy in monolith and said, "Hey more guns makes it better!" and they shit all over the atmosphere established in the first game. Only someone with absolutely no idea what made them popular in the first place would do what has been done to condemned 2.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, the story isn't AS bad as yahtzee says it is, though it is by no means as good as the first, or even good on its own. There is no mention of mystical cults, and you don't "shout at the end boss until his head explodes." Though everything else he says is pretty much accurate.
In summation: No pacing + No plot + No balance = No fun.
Hal
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Redux
So...Interesting story. So I'm walking the dawgs down the old scout trails and I run into a nice fella walking a lab/golden retriever mix and as it turns out this guy actually had a run in with the same lady/bulldog that jumped me and widget last year. He says the dog pulled some of his dog's hair out even though it was wearing a muzzle.
Yikes.
So I come back home and I'm thinking, wow, if I hadn't had a run in with that lady maybe that dog wouldn't have been muzzled and that poor guy's dog would've been a goner.
Maybe everything does happen for a reason. Or maybe the sunshine after such a miserable winter is getting to me.
Hal
Yikes.
So I come back home and I'm thinking, wow, if I hadn't had a run in with that lady maybe that dog wouldn't have been muzzled and that poor guy's dog would've been a goner.
Maybe everything does happen for a reason. Or maybe the sunshine after such a miserable winter is getting to me.
Hal
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
I'm going to restrain myself from making the obvious joke
So I beat The Force Unleashed about a week back, and I had a pretty good time with it, I mean, there's something to be said about taking a storm trooper and flicking him with the force into a barrel of explosives, and then using his burning corpse to destroy a TIE fighter mid flight. Playing it on the hardest difficulty was quite a challenge, but like most beatemups on the highest difficulty it for some reason moves away from any degree of skill into finding your enemies' weakness move and exploiting it over and over, which just ends up feeling cheap. I mean running from bad guys because it's impossible to beat them in such high numbers? WEEEAAAAAK. God of war wasn't above spamming cheapshots, but at least you didn't have to run to save your ass through half the level.
Also, the achievements for using a certain move x number of times have got to fucking stop. I varied my force power usage through 2 playthroughs and barely got any of them!
Also the storm troopers make horrible sounds when you kill them. I actually started to feel really bad for them towards the end of the game. I mean they're all just clones right? They were bred for this crap and chipped up so they couldn't do anything about it. It's not their fault. It's a necessary evil that you have to kill them yeah, but it just feels bad that you kill them so casually and so easily.
Fuckin' Jedis. Self righteous pricks.
ANYWAYS: The game was fun, but it had a few bugs, and the control was awkward. The story was better in my opinion than episode 1, 2 and 3 put together, but that's not saying much.
Also, platforming in action games is one of the most awful things that we've had to put up with since Nintendo's early days. If I wanted to platform I would play mario for fuck's sake. Most action games don't have the controls for this crap, especially FPS games, but that's another rant entirely.
Hal
Also, the achievements for using a certain move x number of times have got to fucking stop. I varied my force power usage through 2 playthroughs and barely got any of them!
Also the storm troopers make horrible sounds when you kill them. I actually started to feel really bad for them towards the end of the game. I mean they're all just clones right? They were bred for this crap and chipped up so they couldn't do anything about it. It's not their fault. It's a necessary evil that you have to kill them yeah, but it just feels bad that you kill them so casually and so easily.
Fuckin' Jedis. Self righteous pricks.
ANYWAYS: The game was fun, but it had a few bugs, and the control was awkward. The story was better in my opinion than episode 1, 2 and 3 put together, but that's not saying much.
Also, platforming in action games is one of the most awful things that we've had to put up with since Nintendo's early days. If I wanted to platform I would play mario for fuck's sake. Most action games don't have the controls for this crap, especially FPS games, but that's another rant entirely.
Hal
Saturday, January 31, 2009
When he died at the end I was almost happy.
So king kong, is without a doubt, the worst game I have played within the last 3-5 years. What bothers me about this though is how GOOD everyone claimed it was back when it was released around the launch of the 360.
I hate this game for making me realize that there are times when fighting T-rexes with a giant monkey isn't totally awesome.
To be fair, the king kong segments WOULD be awesome, if you didn't have to mash yourself into early onset arthritis on the b button just to fucking do anything. There's literally a segment where you fight three t-rexes at once, and every time they grab you, to survive you have to MASH THE B BUTTON, and to kill them you have to MASH THE B BUTTON, and when you're finally done and your thumb is throbbing you have to MASH THE B BUTTON to open a gate and leave! Then you have to do the same shit over again ten minutes later! I seriously thought only nintendo was fucking stupid enough to think mashing a single button as hard as you can qualified in any way as a game. I didn't rent mario party for God's sake.
The shooter segments are fucking horrible. They literally consist of: Find a stick to ram into a log to use as a lever, find a torch to burn some bushes, shoot some dinosaurs. They then take that formula and copy paste it for 20 fucking levels. Though to be fair a couple levels consist of a single action, like the one where you literally just jump off a bridge. But god damn, I though valve was bad with that see-saw puzzle they put in every half life episode. Running from dinosaurs with a limited supply of ammo should be awesome, but it's not. You HAVE to kill most of them, so it becomes an exercise in saving ammunition and throwing spears.
Also, while purely a cosmetical complaint, the character models are hilariously bad. They look like someone whipped them up in poser over their lunch break, and they move/talk like it too.
This kinda shit would've been embarrasing ten years ago. It would've been embarrassing compared to Daikatana! Why the fuck did everyone love it so much?
The main character is a writer that kills dinosaurs for fuck's sake. It should be awesome!
And yes, I did choke my way through the entire thing for the achievement points. I'm not proud.
Hal
I hate this game for making me realize that there are times when fighting T-rexes with a giant monkey isn't totally awesome.
To be fair, the king kong segments WOULD be awesome, if you didn't have to mash yourself into early onset arthritis on the b button just to fucking do anything. There's literally a segment where you fight three t-rexes at once, and every time they grab you, to survive you have to MASH THE B BUTTON, and to kill them you have to MASH THE B BUTTON, and when you're finally done and your thumb is throbbing you have to MASH THE B BUTTON to open a gate and leave! Then you have to do the same shit over again ten minutes later! I seriously thought only nintendo was fucking stupid enough to think mashing a single button as hard as you can qualified in any way as a game. I didn't rent mario party for God's sake.
The shooter segments are fucking horrible. They literally consist of: Find a stick to ram into a log to use as a lever, find a torch to burn some bushes, shoot some dinosaurs. They then take that formula and copy paste it for 20 fucking levels. Though to be fair a couple levels consist of a single action, like the one where you literally just jump off a bridge. But god damn, I though valve was bad with that see-saw puzzle they put in every half life episode. Running from dinosaurs with a limited supply of ammo should be awesome, but it's not. You HAVE to kill most of them, so it becomes an exercise in saving ammunition and throwing spears.
Also, while purely a cosmetical complaint, the character models are hilariously bad. They look like someone whipped them up in poser over their lunch break, and they move/talk like it too.
This kinda shit would've been embarrasing ten years ago. It would've been embarrassing compared to Daikatana! Why the fuck did everyone love it so much?
The main character is a writer that kills dinosaurs for fuck's sake. It should be awesome!
And yes, I did choke my way through the entire thing for the achievement points. I'm not proud.
Hal
Thursday, January 08, 2009
OH SHI- GRENADA!
Wow....so if you've ever wanted to do something mind destroyingly difficult....nay...NIGH IMPOSSIBLE, try playing call of duty 4 on veteran difficulty. This game is literally so hard on its highest difficulty that playing it makes me feel bad about myself. I literally hate myself for playing it so much that I want to give up on the achievements and just send it back, but not only that I want to give up on all the achievements and never play video games again. It's not even the good kind of hard, where one mistake costs you your life. It's the kind of hard that requires luck to see you through, and a momentary frown of the good luck fairy has a thousand bullets hit you square in the face.
Also the lack of checkpoints in between challenging segments makes me want to punch myself in the nuts every time I have to play over 5 minutes or so of gameplay.
I haven't broken a controller yet, but could swear it induced a beserker like fury in me the likes of which hasn't been seen since the norse gods were popular. I'm taking a break now lest the constant tachycardia and high blood pressure weaken my circulatory system too much.
Oh, you think I'm joking...but I'm not.
Of course....actually completing the segments and getting the achievement as proof is the sort of euphoric sensation that you seldom experience on a couch without titties being involved. This kinda shit is something I would have never done before achievements though, and I really have to wonder if those stupid gold stars are worth all this.
Hal
Also the lack of checkpoints in between challenging segments makes me want to punch myself in the nuts every time I have to play over 5 minutes or so of gameplay.
I haven't broken a controller yet, but could swear it induced a beserker like fury in me the likes of which hasn't been seen since the norse gods were popular. I'm taking a break now lest the constant tachycardia and high blood pressure weaken my circulatory system too much.
Oh, you think I'm joking...but I'm not.
Of course....actually completing the segments and getting the achievement as proof is the sort of euphoric sensation that you seldom experience on a couch without titties being involved. This kinda shit is something I would have never done before achievements though, and I really have to wonder if those stupid gold stars are worth all this.
Hal
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