American McGee’s Grimm

I tried out the first free episode of American McGee’s Grimm. For those of you who might not know who this designer is, he’s the guy behind the Tim Burton-esque retelling of Alice in Wonderland with “Alice” as well as the man behind one of the worst games to come out in the last decade, Bad Day LA. But it looks like he’s been busy, keeping a low profile after the critical drubbing given to his last title, with a new company and a new episodic project that he hopes to re-inject some of his twisted humor back into with American McGee’s Grimm.

Each game episode takes one of the Grimm fairy tales and casts you in the role of a small, troll like creature, named…Grimm…whose purpose is to turn those happy endings into happy nightmares. Grimm is dropped into the scene of a fairy tale and basically roams around, his aura corrupting everything around him adding to his stinkiness which, in turn, makes him even more smelly and nasty allowing him to go from corrupting the ground he walks on to turning pastel houses, swingsets, and even people into nasty versions of themselves. And that’s basically it. Grimm simply paints the world with his odiferous self until the happy scene is turned into a cesspool.

The cartoonish graphics take on a simple approach as characters resemble cut out, wooden puppets with flat faces and simple, painted on textures which fits the feel of American’s grim retelling and it actually works out for the best. The simplistic gameplay isn’t bad by providing some humor in watching happy go-lucky fairy tale scenes crash and burn as the color and cuteness are wrung out from them thanks to Grimm’s nastiness. It can get somewhat boring painting every level like this since this seems to be all the gameplay there really is, but the resulting fairy tale is long on content as Grimm recounts the transformed story to the watchful player. If it’s a story you’re after, you’ll get it.

The series is available only on Gametap’s service and looks to follow through with 24 episodes. I could actually see this as a downloadable title on Xbox Live or PSN, though.

Everything looks like a fairy tale paradise fit for carved, pastel colored, wood...

...until Grimm shows up to piss it all away.

Vampire Rain…what the hell?

So they’re really going through with it. I watched the latest “trailer” for the PS3 version of Vampire Rain and it consists of real life actors going through the motions of a SWAT-style takedown of what can only be vampires. This is pretty deceptive stuff considering that from what I’ve read about the game, fighting vampires is the last thing that you ever want to do since they tend to kill you in seconds.

The original Vampire Rain received a vicious and brutal beat down by the critics when it was released on the 360 for a variety of issues, such as mission objectives that involve shooting evil crates, or fooling everyone into thinking that the cool “shooting” stuff you thought you might ventilate vampires with was pretty much an invitation to die often because vampires move like lightning greased ghosts. So why is it even coming out for the PS3? I have no idea, but it might be to try and recoup development costs on what is one of the worst next-gen games out there right now.

I look at this and see its impending release as a sad reminder that titles like it will see a release, while Actiblizzard can so calmly announce news that puts a game like Schaefer’s Brutal Legend potentially out to pasture.

I'm going to kill my agent for putting me in this stupid ad

space siege demo

I’m not a huge fan of Dungeon Siege. I thought the game turned into a repetitive slog with boring loot halfway through when it began playing itself and forced myself to finish it if only to see how the story ended. Needless to say, I didn’t pick up Dungeon Siege II.

But Space Siege would put an interesting twist to Gas Powered Games’ formula, taking the loot-a-thon into space where dungeons are made of carbon steel and aliens are the newest ogres and trolls picking their teeth with astronaut bones. The demo weighs in at around a gig, and it challenges the player to either remain as human as they can or adopt cybernetic upgrades found throughout the game to become the Terminator. There’s also a skill tree in play to upgrade certain skills, parts you can collect to build up your weapons and defenses, and you’ll eventually get a robot to play with in the full game.

The demo shows off a few interesting ideas, but I was completely bored by it. The performance of the demo also left something to be desired. Raising the resolution of the game above its default 1024×768 caused the screen to flicker every time I moved the mouse around which didn’t help, but the graphics weren’t bad. Still, camera control felt a little clunky along with moving around which felt rough around the edges, but hey, it’s a demo, so they might already be working on this stuff. But no uninstall icon? Really?

There also seems to be no loot. Everything looks as if it’s based on a kind of game currency where you collect bits and pieces from the battlefield and salvage it all to add power to your weapons, make new items, or improve your personal defenses by using workbenches scattered throughout the ship. So in essence, you’re farming for junk to transform into gold which I’m really not looking forward to doing over so many hours. The skill tree looks pretty thin on options.

Is it worth buying? If you’re a fan of the Siege series, it might be if the changes don’t bother you so much. Me, I’ll have to pass on this one.

Aliens pour through this doorway to get shot. Yawn.

And you thought magic was dead because we're in the future, eh?

I hope the Arbiter doesn't mind me borrowing his sword for a bit...

This bad guy was the boarding ticket.

star trek online rescued from intergalactic scrap heap

When Perpetual Entertainment folded earlier this year shortly after giving over the Star Trek Online license to another party, a lot of fans thought that the game had disappeared into the internet dust bin. But it looks like Cryptic Studios, the devs behind City of Heroes/City of Villains, have taken up the away mission in continuing work on the game and have officially announced it today.

This one looks like it could be interesting, but with so many MMOs as combat heavy as they are, I wonder how players will adapt to the relatively benign universe that Star Trek hopes to deliver. Perpetual’s vision had described players as being able to explore planets, live out their Starfleet careers, and even captain ships complete with a crew of other players in hopping across the Alpha Sector. From Cryptic’s web page, it sounds like they’re focusing more on captaining ships and dueling with each other out in space or on planets which almost sounds as if it’s going down the more combat heavy route of most other MMOs especially in mentioning a Klingon captain role.

There’s really not a lot else that was revealed on the new official site, but it does hint that Cryptic may have opted for the easier route to character advancement. I’m sure more details will be forthcoming, though, aside from a batch of screenshots.

After tribbles, giant space dragonflies were a much greater problem than the Federation would ever admit.

Titan’s Quest…not bad!

Giant toads and a giant skeleton find starring roles in Titan's Quest

Got through Titan’s Quest and its expansion, Immortal Throne, and I found myself enjoying the game a lot. It’s got loot, a huge bodycount, skills, and an epic quest that pits you against the worst that your Classical studies had probably never prepared you for. For whatever reason, collecting goodies and slaying plenty of monsters never gets old and Titan’s Quest manages to fit the bill, at least until Diablo III comes out. If you’re interested in the mythic details, you can check out what I have to say here.

The Last Guy

Leave it to Japanese devs to come up with some of the strangest ideas. “The Last Guy” is a PSN store game that is due out in Japan for download that plays out like a 21st century version of Rally-X or Wormy using satellite map images. Overhead pics of city neighborhoods are turned into mazes where you guide the last guy through streets to lead the survivors of a zombie outbreak to the Escape Zone. It looks like it could provide some great arcade fun alongside the new Commando and 1942 remixes from Capcom.

You're the last hope for this neighborhood

Damnation, that sounds cool

After playing History Channel’s Civil War shooter, I found out that someone else was aiming to make another game based on “the War Between the States” but with a twist. An outfit called Blue Omega Entertainment is making a game based on the Civil War, only in this version, the war never ended when it was supposed to and had extended into the 20th century. Rourke, an arms dealer, is equipping an army of mercenaries to continue fueling the war from behind the facade of a massive, post-industrial corporate empire that threatens to swallow both sides. Fighting against him and his advanced weaponry are rebels that have managed to remain alive long enough to keep Rourke from achieving his goals. That’s where the player comes in.

From what I’ve been able to gather, the game is reasonably open to approaching each level in a variety of ways, some of them vertically hundreds of feet above the ground, while throwing plenty of steampunkish action in your face. It looks good, save for a few characters that are obviously pandering to the lonely male  teenage demographic, but I’ll probably find myself playing this one when it comes out if only to see stuff blow up real nice.

Jim failed to realize that last night's bean burrito would come back to haunt him at the worst possible moment

The rest of her "body armor" will be available as downloadable content. Actually, not really.

Golden Axe redux

Just as Hollywood is keen to remake its own classics, the video game industry isn’t far behind. Golden Axe: Beast Rider is being remade by Secret Level which is owned by Sega. It sounds like an interesting concept and if they can actually pull it off, it could be a fun retro hack ‘n slash title packed with action. Then again, Secret Level is also responsible for the abysmal Final Fight: Streetwise.

UPDATE: Actually, according to Dogface’s post below (and Wikipedia), Secret Level was responsible only for the port of Streetwise over to the Xbox and not the entire game for which Capcom was. It’s too bad that there isn’t an equivalent “Alan Smithee” that developers can use for projects they know might be garbage, or at least another way to make the distinction clearer as a port. Despite having only two people work on it, it seems that it’s a generalization that they continue to be related to.

I haven’t had a chance to play Beast Rider yet, though. Despite the terrible reviews that it has been getting, Play magazine and comments from other players that I’ve seen on forums have said that it’s still a game worth getting into.

Bigger beasts, smaller warriors

The dark knight rocks my face off

Got back from seeing the Dark Knight. It was everything that I expected out of the sequel, and then some. It ran nearly three hours, but it didn’t feel like it had to drag anything out to make it that long…everything kept moving at a breakneck pace, even the parts that were supposed to be slow and talky. Heath Ledger’s Joker was far darker than Nicholson’s, but purposeful and single-mindedly focused on being the embodiment of pure chaos. He was made out to be the perfect foil for Nolan’s grittier take on the Batman and the movie does an adept job at creating that dynamic in both word and deed especially towards the end. Just as with Brandon Lee’s final performance in The Crow, I can only wonder where Heath Ledger could have gone after Dark Knight. He was that damn good. Everyone was.

Why so serious?

Aaron Eckhart (I remember him from Paycheck and The Core) was perfect as Harvey Dent, the White Knight of Gotham City hellbent on delivering justice to every criminal on the streets. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s performance as Rachel Dawes gave it a sense of realism that matched the film’s darker tone, Lucius Fox’s role as top man at Wayne Enterprises and Batman’s secret engineer was once again brought to subtle life by Morgan Freeman’s understated performance, and Michael Caine is always great to see on the silver screen especially as the fatherly Alfred. Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon was once again awesome, but the film pushes his character even further than the previous film, making him a more integral part of Gotham City and Batman’s work which was fantastic to watch.

There wasn’t anyone in the movie that I thought was simply thrown in for kicks. Even Eric Roberts who appears as mob godfather, Salvatore Maroni, wasn’t bad given how little of a part he actually had. The first film set us up for the ass kicking expertise that Wayne dishes out here, and there’s a lot of it. One problem from the first one, the all-too-fast cuts that made watching the actual fighting feel like a bunch of flashing images, was thankfully polished out as Batman pummels his way to justice along with being pummeled himself. Actually seeing him go hand to hand with the criminal scum of the city using the arts taught to him by an ancient order of assassins had a lot more weight to it now that we can actually see the results.

I’m not spoiling the end, only to say that it was so definitely worth it and sets it up neatly for the franchise to continue. Even if you don’t like superhero movies, it’s definitely worth seeing for the action, the characters, and the story. And no, you don’t have to sit through the credits…no surprise at the end.

The previews that preceded it were the coming of age comedy, College, the vampire book adaptation, Twilight, Tropic Thunder (which looks hilarious), the comic novel adaptation of Watchmen (which I’ve never read, but looks incredibly awesome), and the teaser for Terminator Salvation. No Harry Potter teaser, although there’s not a lot to see with the current one at all.

Keeping the adventure flame burning with ScummVM

Everything after this is harder

There were a lot of adventure games that I had never gotten the chance to get into years ago, but thanks to efforts such as ScummVM, they can still live again to keep me awake at night in pondering solutions to bizarre puzzles. If you don’t know what it is, ScummVM is a program developed by die-hard adventure gamers that has grown over the years and honed into an extremely user friendly application allowing you to run older adventure titles provided you have the data files for them. For example, I have the talkie version of “Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis”. Getting it to run under XP is something akin to jumping through flaming hoops, but with ScummVM, I just have to start it up, parse my way over to the CD drive, and add it to the list of games that you want to start up with it.

The main site has a few downloadable adventure games from yesteryear and I had just finished getting through “Beneath a Steel Sky“, a sci-fi title from Revolution’s earlier days. You might know them from their ongoing franchise, the Broken Sword series, and it’s one of designer Charles Cecil’s first games for the company. I’ve always wanted to get into it, and now that it’s freeware and is supported by ScummVM, it was easier than ever.

Playing through it was a challenge, mostly because of the conventions that adventure gamers take for granted with other, more recent, titles that light up hot spots on the screen with the spacebar or other key making pixel hunting easier to get over. There’s a lot of that in “Beneath a Steel Sky” as some of the objects blended into the background, but it’s one of those classic titles with a solid story that balances out a lot of the hair pulling. It’s a lot of fun with some cheeky humor worked into the narrative and I enjoyed the challenge. There are also a few others, such as “Lure of the Temptress”, Revolution’s first adventure game, and “Flight of the Amazon Queen”.

ScummVM has a pretty impressive compatibility list, most of which consists of Lucasarts titles since the Scumm engine was created to help develop their adventures, but titles such as “Beneath a Steel Sky” also show how versatile ScummVM can be with its support. The Kyrandia series from Westwood Studios is supported, along with a few Space Quest titles. It’s too bad I no longer have a 5.25 drive to transfer the files over, though, but I think I have the Kyrandia stuff on CD and 3.5s.

So, if you have a few older adventure titles that you can’t get to run under XP and don’t want to have to fiddle with files, settings, or search Google for ways to get it to run, ScummVM might be the inventory item you need to get going.