A Top Ten List of Fun Games

As 2008 draws to a close, so does another year of gaming. So what was great and what wasn’t this year?

A lot of these are multiplatform releases, but I indicated which version I played in parenthesis.

1) Fallout 3 (PC version)
Die hards can nitpick all of what went wrong with this game…I can, too…and miss out on the long term benefits of it having resurrected the franchise in today’s cutthroat market. Fallout 3 is fun, delivering a unique experience to today’s players that may have never heard of the franchise, and has a few things that even a veteran scavenger like myself can appreciate. For someone that occasionally fires up Fallout 1, 2, and still has his original disk copies of Wasteland somewhere in this clutter, Fallout 3 manages to do more things right than wrong and that’s always a good thing. After all, it could have become like Microsoft’s Shadowrun.

You'll shoot your eye out, kid.

2) Metal Gear Solid 4 – Guns of the Patriots (PS3)
Hideo Kojima’s magnum opus in closing the story of one of gaming’s most respected icons is the kind of title that can only come out after twenty years of incredible success. It’s a game that actually makes you feel proud to own a PS3 and as a Metal Gear fan, is filled with all of the answers to the questions that the series had started off with, confusing us with endless speculation and debate on what is really going on. After the weirdness of MGS2 and the redemption of MGS3, the twisted, unexpectedly fourth-wall breaking, PMC commentary of MGS4 has finally capped everything off without sending anyone to the psyche ward this time around. Rest easy, Snake. You’ve earned it.

This warrior's fight is over, but the series will likely live on.

3) Dead Space (360 version)
Dead Space was a huge surprise for me. I wasn’t immediately blown away by its initial announcement last year by yet another “survival horror” title or by the screenshots of the banded armor that the guy was wearing, until I actually sat down and started playing the thing. It comes off as a huge mashup of bits and pieces of games such as System Shock and Resident Evil while layering it with a little celluloid from Event Horizon and Aliens. The final result is a scary, action packed adventure in the bowels of space that bodes well as a new IP for EA. I couldn’t get into the RE5 demo as much as I loved RE4. Dead Space clearly improved on its approach to third person controls.

The game isn't above throwing mutant babies at you, either. Mutant BABIES. Parasite Eve, is that you?

4) Tales of Vesperia (360)
The 360’s RPG offerings have been improved significantly this year with an incredible number of holiday releases focused on the console. Namco Bandai’s “Tales” series makes its debut on Microsoft’s box with a fantastic entry into the storied franchise with “Tales of Vesperia”, one of the best RPGs that newcomers and veterans both can have fun with. With a solid, if predictable, story, charming characters, and a host of upgrade options and skills that they can collect to create a party of infinite power, it’s also a JRPG that delivers an entertainingly fresh perspective on the traditional hero model with an older, more seasoned, protagonist than previously leading roles in the series had been. A brilliant entry into the series for fans, but the action formula is getting a bit long in the tooth.

Sure it's cutesy, but the gameplay and character interactions are worth the sugary feeling your eyes get.

5) Mirror’s Edge (360 version)
I’m putting it on this list despite its gameplay issues because when it works, it’s an incredibly unique experience to play through. It plays off as a first-person, free running simulation, with all of the slides, jumps, and clambering over obstacles that you should expect while being able to see your appendages instead of feeling like a floating camera. The setting is a bleached city with deceptively clean buildings and streets, a controlled world where information is monitored and the only people that are free are those that can leap from rooftop to rooftop on their own two feet. I can still pick up and use weapons in the game, but it’s a lot more rewarding in playing the role of a runner trying to stay a step ahead of the heat in using the environment against them.

Mirror's Edge won't help with your fear of heights, but makes it fun to pretend that you don't have any.

6) Valkyria Chronicles (PS3)
This was an unexpected, but very much appreciated, surprise from Sega this holiday season. Valkyria Chronicles’ unique approach to its third person strategy coupled with a tear-jerking cast of memorable characters (including cameos from Skies of Arcadia) help embellish its storybook aesthetics in creating a stunning and unforgettable experience for PS3 owners. Unfortunately, as sales figures for it were disappointingly low…likely owing to its presence in the US as a new IP lost amidst the regular retail rush for FPSs, sports, and familiar names…its future as a possible franchise is in heavy doubt on this side of the ocean.

Unfortunately, the market demands those shooters, sports titles, and sequels to popular properties because those are what most of the purchasing public votes for with their dollars. Valkyria Chronicles is a stunning achievement from Sega, but you can’t convince a shooter fan or a sports nut that it’s what they should add to their weltanschauung if they only want more of the same.

Sega has announced the porting over of the DLC from Japan that introduces new campaigns and a different side to the story, so fans can continue to enjoy one of the best internally developed releases that Sega has had this year.

Interpersonal conflicts are only a small window on the war in Valkyria Chronicles

7) Grand Theft Auto IV (360 version)
As a major chapter showcasing Rockstar’s technical prowess in delivering a living, breathing cityscape for the next generation, it is a roller coaster ride from start to finish with all of the gunplay and open-world possibilities that the franchise has created a reputation for. I liked GTAIV’s action packed free roaming gameplay and its technical merits are a preview of what Rockstar has planned for the franchise going forward in much the same way that its PS2 offering had advanced it. What I didn’t like so much were the baby steps that it took to further distance itself from the somewhat tongue-in-cheek approach that its previous iterations were known for by moving ahead with a Sopranos-like adherence to its story and characters. Bowling, darts, and socialization were made key components to the design, overriding some of the more flamboyant elements such as property purchases, or neighborhood defense which made sense in terms of what the game wanted to be, but weren’t all that fun in practice. What’s the point of earning all that dough if there’s nothing to spend it on…unless you want to burn hundreds of thousands of dollars at pool and, uh, darts.

Niko is in town to enjoy the American Dream and steal cars with Brucie

8 ) Gears of War 2 (360)
Comic book writer and author, Joshua Ortega, was brought onboard to help flesh out the characters and the plot, making it more noticeably focused this time around with less caveman talk and more dry commentary from Damon. The ferocious action and the twisting revelations unraveling in this third-person shooter along with Horde multiplayer make it a tremendously exciting trip on the 360. It can feel like it’s more of the same, but if you love Gears and can’t get enough of it, Cliff Blezinski and his crew at Epic ring up plenty of gory holiday treats with the sequel.

The COG declares total war on the Locust. Dueling chainsaws included.

9) Resistance 2 (PS3)
Not to be outdone, PS3 fans have a lot to celebrate with the sequel to Insomniac’s Resistance. The theme this holiday season is war, and Resistance 2 drops you down into a gripping campaign and some of the most thrilling multiplayer that you might ever experience on Sony’s console. With co-op missions, rankings, in-game experience, and classes to choose from along with a healthy number of gameplay modes supporting up to 60 players, Resistance 2 is a remarkable achievement even with how buggy it can get. Too bad that the best parts of the story were turned into “collectables” instead of integrated into the ongoing campaign, or that much of the single player feels formulaic, but it manages to pull ahead of its shortcomings by providing plenty of eye candy and entertaining action that kept me plugging on until the bitter end.

This may only be an artist's rendering of the invasion, but it's not far from what you'll see in the game. The Chimera weren't too happy about what you did in the first Resistance.

10) Persona 4 (PS2)
The PS2 isn’t dead yet, but with Persona 4 ringing out the year on the console, it’s given a deservedly solid sendoff with one of the most compelling JRPGs to come out for it. Persona 3’s addicting blend of social sim and RPG makes another comeback with its sequel, set with different characters and in no way directly related to its predecessor making it a stand-alone story that newcomers and veterans can enjoy without having to worry about what happened before. If you haven’t played any of the Persona titles before, you’re in for a real treat.

Exploring streets, stores, chatting up NPCs, and befriending others will build up your social links...and you ability to wield powerful Personas to do battle with.

Honorable Mention
Yakuza 2 (PS2)
I loved the first game and the second one delivers even more curb stomping, face punching, sign smashing action taking players deep into a fictionalized account of a former Yakuza strongman’s quest to find answers on the streets of Japan’s underworld. It’s another Sega production that dares to be different, with an all Japanese, subtitled voice track and its connection to the real-world with a setting ripped straight out of a Japanese atlas for Osaka. It’s a unique title that will also likely go unnoticed in the face of more popular offerings, but as a gem of a release with nothing else really like it, and if you feel the need to dance on the wild side as a legendary gangster, you might want to pick this up with all five fingers.

You might dress like you're out of the eighties, but you also have the ablity to smash people's faces with your snakeskin boots.

clear skies when you bring out your dead

Still trying to get used to the whole bleeding thing in Clear Skies, but things went a lot better yesterday than they did my first day back out in the Zone. That is, only when I worked my scavenger instincts. I did a lot more exploration and tried to go as far as the unlocked areas would let me without advancing the story. The military warehouses were still locked down at the time, I couldn’t get into the Red Forest, but I could get to the Dark Valley where the Freedom faction was and head west to the Agroprom Instititute where Duty was holed up.

Doing a job for the Freedom faction got me improved “Sunrise” armor which was a lot better than the combat armor that I was given at the start of the game from Clear Skies. There was also a Stalker faction in the factory area northeast of the Agroprom and that’s where things started to really take off. See, they were under attack by bandits all of the time…either from the eastern entrance, or the west. Waiting paid off dividends.

Robbing the dead has its advantages, especially when no one bothers to clean up the mess. Profiteering in the Zone, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. way!

The Stalkers were decently well armed with scoped assault rifles…I think with the IL 86s and AK96. One of them even had a Vintorez BC sniper/assault rifle. They held off the bandit assaults, but not all of them made it. I helped myself to what was left and made a small profit plus got a scoped IL 86 and a Vintorez out of the deal, replacing my AK96. Hey, it’s the Zone, it’s what you have to do to survive, although in Shadows of Chernobyl, I was able to actually fight for my stuff and feel like a survivor instead of a target.

Bleeding is still aggravating, and money slips through my fingers because of all of the first aid I’m forced to buy, and the AI still has telescopic vision in the dark no matter how far it is, but I haven’t had a weapon jam in a long time with either the IL or the Vintorez which is kind of a relief. After tooling around with those, I also scavenged an L85-A1, upgraded that, and can now actually stand a better chance of not getting perforated by sniping bandits with shotguns. And after advancing along the story for a bit, I put that into storage once I picked this up…

Now I have a machine gun...ho, ho, ho. But it had better not jam as often as most of the other garbage. It IS Soviet stock, so maybe I'll be able to party like it's Lenin's birthday without worrying.

I was given a job by a Duty guy to get this gun back to him. This was one of the more screwed up jobs in the Zone since the tank that this was attached to was an earlier quest objective hidden deep in the Red Forest, which meant that I basically had to backtrack all the way through it again just to get it. And the reward? Only 7500 measly rubles. That’s it? For risking my life with a small army of mutants, unpredictable blowouts, and abnormalities that suck you up into the air and blow you apart?

So I kept it and with the weight enhancement artifacts along with its devastating firepower, I can keep a sniper rifle in reserve and use this for everything else. Finally! I can actually take things out without waiting for others to do it for me, or empty entire clips because of a few bulletproof heads.

Stalker clear skies wants you to have time to bleed

One of the games that I was given on Christmas was S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Skies, the prequel to the awesome S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadows of Chernobyl title that came out last year and in which I sunk way too many post-apocalyptic hours into its immersive world. Originally intended to be a content patch for the first game, Clear Skies grew with so many improvements and new ideas that the developers decided to make it an official prequel. Now fans like me have faction wars, upgrades, and improved graphics to look forward to.

There’s also the insane difficulty. SoC was hard when I first started the game, but eventually, I managed to survive long enough to see the end. In Clear Skies, I was lucky to survive with enough patience to even get out to see other stalkers. Some players may get a kick out of this kind of ‘realism’, but even when graded against the real world, some disagree with its interpretation. Several factors that I can already see as design decisions made to enhance the realism of the game, others in order to address particulra shortcomings, such as certain things that modders wished was in SoC and had made some of it available through their own work. The problem is that some of these changes no longer make the game as much fun as the first.

Weapon jamming is now pandemic across most firearms to a degree that if a modern army were being fielded with the assault rifles from Clear Skies, it would lose whatever war it would go into. Weapon jamming is a real world concern, and I’ve read on forums where players try to explain it by saying “the radiation did something to the guns” or “they’re not kept as well as if they were owned by soldiers”.

My first assault rifle in the game was from a soldier, that and every other version that I’ve used so unless that soldier was the worst soldier in his squad and had touched every weapon I had used, this doesn’t make much sense. I’ve read posts elsewhere from people that have actually fired weapons like these (or their real world equivalent) can’t believe how awful they function in the game. It’s fun when it happens as a gradient over time, but not four or five times in less than a minute when the indicator shows that it’s practically in pristine condition. And that happens often enough to make me think the Zone is one huge beta testing group for firearms. The only other impression that I got from this was that it was a heavy handed response to the work modders did and the criticisms leveled at it from the modding community. If they were going to take what they said to heart, they could have at least put the vehicles in, too.

One in four STALKERS prefer blowback to the weapon jamming frequency in Clear Skies. Too bad for him.

There’s also the bleeding thing. Yeah, I hate that, but you can tell that in Clear Skies, it gives the player something new to do with their money which was a problem in the last game since it didn’t give you enough things to use it for unless you modded it. But even here, it was implemented with an eye to selling more stock in Johnson & Johnson. With all of the first aid I’m buying, I’ll probably be lucky to hang onto a few thousand given how often I bleed from every shot. Difficulty levels in the game won’t change this, either, so you’re stuck bleeding like a pig from every bullet.

Is it realistic? Yes, that’s normally what happens when you get hit with a bullet. Is it fun in a game? Only if you’re expecting this to be the same as Ghost Recon, which it isn’t since it’s more focused on in-your-face action and adrenaline charged set pieces. I’ve played Ghost Recon and have gotten killed from one shot often, but it was a tactical shooter with the idea that it is possible to survive if you are smart with your squad. In Clear Skies, it isn’t so much a matter of skill as it is in the fact that the enemy has X-ray vision, precision aiming, and bulletproof faces at even the easiest level. And yet, they’ll sometimes stand around and get shot anyway as the AI seesaws from being unforgiving and then daydreaming despite the bullets ripping into them from around the corner.

When I left the Swamp area by helping the Clear Skies faction, I came out next to the military outpost. Sidorovich, the merchant guy from SoC, chimes in on your headset and says good luck trying to get past it. What he doesn’t mention is that the minigun guy stationed there has unerring accuracy with his machine gun in the dark. In fact, most enemies in the game have incredible accuracy and can take a full clip from an AK-74 in the chest at less than five feet before dying. At least in Ghost Recon, when you shoot a bad guy with a bullet, you don’t have to worry about them and it only takes one as long as your aim is true. The machine gun guy didn’t even have night vision, or at least, not from what I could see. Clear Skies still doesn’t allow you to loot armor that could help you so if he had it, it wasn’t there or had been embedded into his skull.

Thanks to an AI that kept coming back to the same spot every time...and shotgun headshots...I ambushed these guys for my first assault rifle...which can't shoot through bushes.

I can already hear “But it’s body armor so it’s realistic that way!”. Then explain the head thing? The only thing that seems to work with a headshot is a shotgun at point blank range. When it doesn’t, the wiz-smart AI usually just stands there while my next ten shots mysteriously miss as badly as Greedo’s did at Mos Eisley because of the enhanced ‘realism’. Go to a shooting range, watch a proving ground documentary, or watch a demonstration and see how someone proficient can group their shots with a variety of firearms and not have a bullet fly at 45 degree angles as soon as it leaves the barrel.

My guy is supposed to be a merc, this is game that supposedly puts you in his shoes, but the only degree of separation that it gives you from the real world is his face. In a title like Ghost Recon, your men are professionals but you still need to line up the shots and take control of the situation. But you don’t need to nurse maid everything they do, such as their their ability to handle the weapons that they’re given allowing you, the player, to feel like a professional within its rules. It’s a degree of separation there that still enables you to feel as if you are doing something without compromising the fun factor. This is why a title such as COD offers deadly realism at Veteran difficulty as opposed to dishing it out to novices. Infinity Ward and Treyarch want you to enjoy the experience, not be punished from the start because they don’t want to be criticized for being too soft.

Clear Skies feels too much like an attempt to transplant too much of the real world into its gameplay without compromise, but with such a heavy handed approach that it can be too frustrating to be enjoyable. I’ll still try and plug my way through this one, but right now…I’m having less fun with it than I did with vanilla SoC. On the plus side, the it does look good.

Even at this range, shooting that helmeted guy next to him is just as effective as trying to shoot that dot on the horizon thanks to Clear Skies' "magic bullets". Realism, I love it!

Happy holidays

It’s the holiday season and the gaming industry has also gone on to celebrate it with everyone in the very best way that they know how. So…Happy Holidays!

Aperture Sciences, Black Mesa’s rival and the inventive minds behind Portal, have something to share with everyone at their site:

Christmas with a Companion Cube. It can't get any better. Really, it can't. Why don't you believe me? Would you like some cake?

Courtesy of Kotaku, Bioware’s Dragon Age also celebrates the season in its own way:

What is best this season? To tear open your gifts, to share time with your family and friends, and to hear the lamentations of your scale for having eaten too much. That is good! YEAAAAARGH!

Guerilla Games’ Killzone has also gotten into the festivities with holiday cheery wallpaper:

It's Christmas in the 24th century! This is probably AFTER the war.

And who can forget Geralt, our favorite monster hunter from the Witcher? Nothing can keep this exterminator from celebrating a little cheer, even without smiling:

Geralt leads a motley group of carolers on a mission to sing monsters to death. It must be working, I haven't seen any lately...unless I go shopping.

Happy Holidays! Again!

Very late to the party: Two Worlds

It was cheap and I was curious so I plopped down the coin to see if this RPG was the second coming of Broderbund’s Deadly Towers. I kind of liked Deadly Towers when I was a wee lad, it didn’t bother me as much as its reputation today seems to demand that it must, and that’s what I found with Two Worlds. It’s not horrible stuff and it wasn’t as buggy as I thought it might be from all of the negative press that had swirled around it, but the problems with the game are far deeper than its technical shortcomings. Not the worst RPG that I’ve played, but definitely not what its box touts as “…the most epic RPG of our time”.

As usual, you can check out my scribbled role playing report on this adventure here.

This used to be a city filled with orcs. Used to be.

Street Fighter IV Collector’s Edition…wow, now that’s a CE

Kotaku reports that Capcom has changed the box art for the SF4 CE to something “more cool”, but that’s not what’s interesting about the packages pictured here (images from Kotaku also). They’re both getting different figures for the fans:

I'm not a PS3 fanboy, but come on, who wouldn't want Ryu glaring at them like this as a part of their figure collection? I promise, I won't tell them about your Sailor Moon fetish...

And who do 360 owners get? Cammy? Chun Li? No, they get a figure of the new fighter, Crimson Viper. While it's still cool and all, I kind of wish Capcom chose someone else. Neat pose, though, and I see she's got the regulation Capcom Cleaveage shot.

Both versions are virtually identical and will cost $80 on release. Both will have a movie that covers the events from SFII on to explain how everyone has gotten together for SF4. The 360 version of the movie is on a game disc while PS3 owners get theirs on Blu-Ray. That makes sense considering that HD-DVD is all but dead at this point and not everyone will have the attachment for their 360s.

There’s also a strategy guide sampler, not that veterans will want to reach for that anytime soon since they’ll be busy punching and kicking each other as soon as they can get the disc into their console of choice.

It sounds like a great deal for both consoles, despite some of the differences, as the hype machine begins ramping up for its release next year. I’m not a fighter fan myself, but I’m interested to see just what gamers are going to think when they get a chance to put this through its paces. Both veterans and newcomers should find something to like with this. If there’s one thing that Capcom’s big releases always try to do, it’s to slowly ease everyone into the new ideas that their wonder factory continues to come out with.

Can’t wait to see more!

Crackdown 2…maybe???

ScottishGames has reported that a new developer called Ruffian might be setting up shop in Dundee. That’s in Scotland, if the link didn’t tip you off earlier. So what’s so special about that?

Well, Gamasutra has also followed up on this reporting that the people doing the scouting and founding are none other than members of the team that had developed Crackdown, that oh so awesome Xbox 360 superhero sandbox title where you could earn an achievement for punting a corpse or juggling vehicles in the air with rockets. I thought it was an underrated title that should have gotten more attention, but it seems to have succeeded as a cult favorite long after its release. To hear some people talk about Crackdown on the forums recently, it seems to have gotten a better reception a few years later now that getting it for the Halo 3 beta is kind of pointless.

If this means that a new Crackdown might be on its way, woohoo! I’m totally for it.

As a super agent, you don't need to worry about insurance.

gundam 00 awesomeness

I’ve been watching the second season of Gundam 00 and am still amazed at how great it is. The first season is the first time I’ve actually sat down to watch an entire Gundam arc. I’ve always wanted to give it a try, but seeing how many episodes there are spread throughout an incredible number of side stories, main chapters, etc.. was intimidating stuff. I didn’t know where to begin, or even if I SHOULD begin. Then Gundam 00 came along and I decided “hey, why not”. It’s a new series, it’s starting off without much baggage, and it’s a celebration of the Gundam phenomenon so I jumped in and have been enjoying the ride so far.

The second season has really kicked things up with recurring characters and situations, especially in seeing many of them turn out as they are four years later. Saji Crossroad has come a long way from being a naive student to having his eyes opened at the conflict between Celestial Being and the new A-Laws. Louise Halevy, his friend, has gotten her hand back somehow and is wrestling with whatever that process has cost her. Seeing her as an A-Law was also a huge surprise. It seems she didn’t waste any time after leaving the hospital.

Seeing Setsuna back in action was fantastic, and seeing Tiera Erde, Halleluja, and Sumeragi, Ian, and the rest of the crew from the last season flex their expertise continued to remind me of why I watch anime, especially now that the odds feel heavily stacked against them. The series really has got it down to the point that it feels Celestial Being is now the underdog instead of the unchallenged interventionists of the first season making it grittier, and the characters are really coming into their own. Far from being your typical “big robot” anime, the military feel and the moral dilemmas, personal struggles, and parallels with our world today are eerily sobering topics to watch in animated form. There’s still plenty of super-technology that pulls everyone’s fat out of the fire flying around, but in between the flames, seeing how human many of the characters can be is what’s drawing me in.

Can’t wait for the next episode.

When you see this, you know someone's going to explode. That's just how it is with giant robots and hyper technology.

Rise of the Argonauts looks strange

A new video for Rise of the Argonauts is up and I’m not sure what some of the character artists were directed to do when they came up with some of these designs. It looks like a knockoff of God of War (I think that’s the curse that most any game that features anything remotely resembling its gameplay is going to suffer under for the next few years, just like how every FPS after Doom had to be compared to it and, eventually Quake). But it also kind of looks like it could be fun. Just,  wow, this guy needs a chest reduction. And that’s not right.

If someone makes a joke about me not being able to see my toes, I, well...okay fine. It's true. I can't.

Hah! Take that knave! I'll stab you viciously with my spear and...what?! You still get up after that? WTF?!

Legendary file size

Huge…2 GBs worth of huge. That’s the size of the demo for Spark’s game, Legendary, the PC version, and that’s the packed size before installation.

The game stars you as a thief who was asked to steal Pandora’s Box from a New York museum. How or why such an artifact is there instead of that warehouse where they put the Ark in after Indiana Jones found it is beyond the scope of this blog, but apparently something goes wrong. Instead, it unleashes all of the mythological nasties from the past on the world and apparently imbues you with the power to absorb life force.

The action seems to be pretty straightforward stuff…it’s certainly more entertaining than Turning Point, Spark’s other game which didn’t do so hot, but the interface is boring and the weapons are pretty meh. The only things that stood out about the demo were the visuals (powered by UE3) and the creatures. Might be good as a rental, but you have to wonder why Gamestop marked it down to $30 bucks this soon in its release cycle…and that’s the console version. It hasn’t dropped as far as Wartech’s bargain basement price of $9, but it’s cheaper than Turning Point which has been out longer. Weird.

Sparks' artists make great use of UE3 to make everything look pretty in Legendary. I just wish the gameplay were as good.