Gaming Signal

Holiday Gaming

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 14:38:05 -0600

Here are a few of the games I've played this holiday season and my thoughts on them.

Left 4 Dead : been playing this on my 360 with my son and my brother-in-law and it is a blast. The 2-player split-screen support is great and allows us all to play. Only the Live Gold subscribers can chat, but that doesn't stop the fun.

Rock Band 2 : another one that allows both local and online players to play at the same time, we've been enjoying 4-person bands with my brother-in law and his girlfriend on one end, and me and my son on the other. I was afraid this game might not be so fun without a full group but 2 player is just as enjoyable as I hoped.

Horton Hears a Who - You to the Rescue! and Cat in the Hat - I Can Do That! : two great board games for the younger players (ages 4 and up) that even the older kids can enjoy. Both are very simple with physical actions you have to perform in order to score points. Neither require deep thinking, but the physical activities are great for the younger set that can't understand moving pieces around a game board anyway. The production values on both are very high with durable components and excellent use of licensed art from Dr. Seuss.

Star Wars Pocketmodel TCG : one of the last things Wizkidz did before they were shut down, this game is a major disappointment. The models are weak, the production value low, and the gameplay was only so-so. I had high hopes we might be able to pick a few of these up on the cheap (Target had them on clearance) but I won't bother.

World of Warcraft Miniatures Game : on the opposite end of the spectrum from Wizkidz we have Upper Deck's miniatures game. This one is everything Wizkidz was not (although the bases aren't quite as good as Wizkidz.) The pre-painted plastic miniatures look great with plenty of detail and are classic WoW in appearance. I instantly recognized the Troll priestess, Drenei paladin, Gnome mage, etc. I gave my son the Starter Set ($20) to see how it worked and we loved it. The starter set comes with 4 minis (preselected Common heroes), a paper game board, 6 branded 10-sided dice, and 6 character Ubases. These bases are interchangeable between character models and required to play the game. They let you see the health a character currently has as well as the next round it is allowed to move in. We loved it so much, we went out yesterday and bought the Deluxe Edition ($40) and a booster pack ($10). The Deluxe Edition comes with a hardboard game board, tiles and tokens to create unique map boards, 6 random miniatures, 6 Ubases, 6 branded dice, and a better rulebook than the starter set. The game is pretty straight forward although the round-based movement system is a little tedious to keep track of. If you get this game, I recommend getting the Deluxe Edition because the game board is so much better than the one in the Starter Set. I got a couple of Rare figures but nothing Epic or Legendary, and so far no monsters (although there certainly are those in the set.) We're looking forward to one of the promised Raid encounters because it looks like it will be more of a cooperative game.

Lego Batman : best Lego game yet, and full of co-op goodness. I can't believe how many good co-op games there are on the 360 suddenly (after 2 years of nearly nothing decent.) We rented it and managed to wring every once we could out of it in a couple of weeks. If there is a downside, once you complete all the missions the game is effectively over.

World of Goo : an Indy game you can buy for $20 for the PC or for the Wii. I went for the PC version because of the community additions that are in the works. It's a fun diversion from the standard big-budget fare but the art is fantastic and the puzzles addicting.

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode 2 : the second installment of the Penny Arcade adventure/RPG. I played the first on the PC and the second on the Xbox and I think I prefer the Xbox version for ease of control. The humor is still excellent and the overall game is worth playing despite some moments of just crazy gameplay.

Gaming lately?

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:31:33 -0600

Taking full advantage of the awesome Fall of Gaming we are having, I've been playing a few games I thought I would share with the group.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for the Xbox 360 - I've played through the game once and found it awesome. Great simulation of force powers and a strong story. It was shorter than I might like, but there is some amount of replayability if only because the game is fun and you can start the plot over with your character progressed to whatever level they were at near the end.

Spore for the PC - my son and I have been having a great time with this one. There is more depth to the game than I think a cursory look will show you - and I suspect that's what many bloggers did. Creature creation is surprisingly fun, and being able to attack, befriend, and otherwise interact with creatures created by your buddies is more interesting than I expected. You can probably say that Spore is 5 games in one, with some aspects deeper than others. The Cell stage is pretty simple (as you might expect) and plays like a 2D arcade side-scroller, but quickly gives way to the far more interesting creature stage. Creature stage kind of plays like an RPG with the ability to befriend in addition to combat. Tribal and Civilization stages both play like RTS games, although Tribal is simpler with fewer units to control (and brutally difficult in Hard, I might add.) Space stage plays out yet differently, with elements of a 4x game ala Masters of Orion. Fun, and my son is getting to try out different game types with different levels of complexity.

What are you playing?

To Spore or not to Spore

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 06:25:24 -0600

With apologies to the Bard...

I've been looking forward to the new PC game, Spore, for awhile now. I even went so far as to purchase the Spore Creature Creator to get a taste of the game. (Result: Needed more info than was provided to me, but I'm slow)

The hype just kept building, but a few chinks in the damn appeared this past week, with a couple of European sites giving Spore less than awesome reviews, citing a general lack of gameplay as the main reason. Sure, all the stages of the game are interesting in concept, but the actual 'fun' was left out to some degree. I see the Metacritic score is rather high from the review sites, but a lot lower from the actual gaming public. Strike one.

Then along came word that Walter John Williams actually wrote all the dialog and some of the space situations for the game. A real life SF writer writing real life, SF for a game. Awesome! The count is now: 1 ball, 1 strike.

I was at the store today, which shall remain nameless but rhymes with Wal Mart, and almost, almost, dropped by the Gamestop to purchase Spore with my carefully horded wad of store credit and gift cards. But a quick call to Mr. Sanity, Tim, changed my mind, not the least of which because the game will drop in price, probably in short order. The count: 1 ball, 2 strikes.

And now I see there is a player rebellion against EA and Spore over on the Amazon page for the game. Spore, and by extension EA, is being savaged for its horribly intrusive and abusive copy-protection. This is pretty much a deal killer for me. I end up having to re-install my OSes every so often and only three 'activations' is just ridiculous. I'm shelling out some hard earned cash for a game, I want to be assured that I can install when and where I want, without the publisher looking over my shoulder. I don't even see the point here, as any copy protection they come out with will be cracked withing thirty microseconds of release. All they're doing is hurting their customers. The ones who are paying (in more ways than one) for their games. Sorry EA, you've lost a sale from me. Strike 3, yer out! (Oh how I wish I could find a video of Dutch Rennert punching out a batter. Makes me sad knowing he isn't umpiring anymore.)

I think I'll be thinking twice about buying anymore EA games, especially those with terrible copy protection. If you'd like to see a company that doesn't treat its customers like thieves, try Stardock. Galactic Civilizations is fun and has no copy protection whatsoever. In fact, none of their games do. And see their Gamers Bill of Rights to understand why they get it.

Fall of Gaming!

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:56:43 -0600

Am I the only one that sees a tremendous fall of gaming shaping up? It's not going to be much of a long cold winter at my house with what seems an amazing collection of high quality games coming out. Here are a few that I'm looking forward to.

Rock Band 2 - Everybody I know who has the first version of this game loves it, so I'm jumping to in on this version for the 360 since it has all wireless instruments and an enormous list of downloadable songs.

Force Unleashed - If the demo of this game (available on XBL Marketplace) is representative of the full game I think Lucasarts has a hit here. My only lament is that it's not going to be available on the PC, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well the game played on the console controller.

Spore - I'm not always a fan of Will Wright games, but this one just looks so interesting it's going to be worth playing with even if there isn't going to be much of a challenging game here.

Fallout 3 - What's not to love about a post-apocalyptic wasteland? Oh, and a strong RPG element - at least I'm hoping it's as deep as previous installments.

Gears of War 2 - Now I didn't find GoW to be the best game I've ever played, but unless I miss my mark this is going to get a lot of play with my buds and as a result some strong multi-player is in our future.

And that's not all, there are more - Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X, Resident Evil 5, and it goes on and on!

The Spore Hype Continues

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:23:56 -0600

Spore is the new 'God' game from Will Wright, where players get to create their own alien creatures and guide them from humble beginnings all the way to galactic conquest. We've mentioned that National Geographic will be airing a documentary, How to Build a Better Being, about the game on Sept. 9th. IGN has an exclusive clip from the show about the evolution of eye sight and how it will transfer to evolution in the video game. Rather interesting how the eyesight of the creature affects the display on screen.

I was all set to buy this as soon as it came out, however its been receiving wildly divergent scores so I'm not sure anymore. Anyone else out there buying this one?

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:06:23 -0600

I stumbled upon this really interesting student created game called The Misadventrures of P.B. Winterbottom. It has a really nice 1920's vibe to it and all wrapped up in a black and white, silent film aesthetic. But what's it about? I'll let the creators tell you:

Create Your Own Paradox for the Love of Pie!
Enter a macabre and comical silent film world filled with mischief, time travel, and delicious pie. Record yourself and harness your time bending abilities to cooperate, compete against, and disrupt your past, present, and future selves. Winterbottom's debut misadventures present whimsical spin on the notions of time, space, and play.

The best part? One of the 'features' is this: Record your Actions to Create Time Clones in a Silent Film World.

That has to be one of the best game features, ever. But what does it look like? Feast your eyes on the trailer:

The ability to interact with your 'time clones' is really impressive. It's taking the time travel ability from games like Prince of Persia and Braid and going to a whole new level. Insane yet cool, and all done by students at USC Interactive Media department. The game industry should take a look at what these students are doing. Original and unique, unlike most of the video games industry. (Hmm, the same could be said about Hollywood. Coincidence? I think not.) Where was this type of stuff when I was going to college? I'd be all over a B.A. in Interactive Entertainment.

Sadly, I don't know if this will ever make to a PC or console near you. It seems perfect for something like Steam or Xbox Live Arcade. They'd get my money.

MMO Economies...or why I like to play on full servers

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:11:47 -0600

The economies in MMOs are primarily based on only one thing - time. If you put in time on the game you'll get something out of it that can be traded or bartered. That might be in-game currency or items, but either one work.

Acquiring the right items at the right time maximizes your advancement. I believe this to be a fact of almost all MMOs. Whether equipment like swords or guns or raw materials for crafting or something else, having them when you need them makes a difference. And we all need to admit that advancing through an MMO is what makes it fun. Advancement is the real reward for the time spent. But as a result, being able to acquire the items you need easily - for the least time invested - makes a difference. And that translates into fun.

The more people there are playing on your server, the more total man-hours that is spent and therefore, the more items exist. The more items exist, the lower their value, and ultimately, the cheaper they are to acquire through trade. The more people there are engaging in trade also works to drive prices down. And finally, with more people there is less chance of somebody forming a cartel to artificially keep prices high. There is more currency as well, but because it is spread out it doesn't have the inflationary impact it might have if it were concentrated in a few hands.

As a result, I enjoy playing on servers with the most other people. It can result in some frustration associated with dueling for spawn locations or an increase in childish behavior, but to me the overall benefits outweigh the downside.

What do you think?

REVIEW: Rainbow Six Vegas 2

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:15:29 -0600

Return to the seedy side of Las Vegas and once again play counter-terrorists opereating inside the US in a sequel to a solid game from 2006. My bottom-line review is - if you enjoyed the first game, you'll enjoy this one because honestly, there isn't much more to it than an expansion pack. I finished the single-player game in about 10 hours of play, and that made me glad I had rented it.

There is a lot to like here. The gameplay is solid. The difficulty has been ramped up over the first game, but I found that to be a good thing. Most of the time I felt I was playing against other humans with the AI flanking me and throwing grenades at annoying times. And yes, sometimes I got hit by that golden BB and had to restart the mission, but overall I felt it was balanced. The ending sequence involving a Helicopter (with shades of Half-life) is a pretty good set piece but I wished they had put a couple more in earlier in the game so the gameplay didn't feel so incredibly different.

The story is interesting and for the most part compelled me to keep playing. I found myself a little uninterested in the ending, but otherwise it was cool. While the game has it's name, the city of Las Vegas is overall missing. There is one portion of the game in a casino, but otherwise you spend your time in office buildings or refineries. Didn't bother me that much, but the first game felt a lot more like I was in the real city. There is one portion in the convention center that I liked, but that part felt a bit gratuitous for the developers as they set a video game convention going on at the time (with ads for Tropic Thunder, Comcast, and Splinter Cell all over the place.)

The graphics are great, and I appreciated the daytime lighting so that I didn't have to spend the entire game in either night-vision or thermal camera modes (ala Splinter Cell.) Framerate was excellent throughout although physics seems totally abasent. After playing many games with ragdoll physics from Havok or others, it was a bit unusual to play without it but it didn't detract from the overall game.

I didn't have a buddy to play co-op with unfortunately. I did try out splitscreen co-op mode with my son, however the game is just too difficult for a 9-year old FPS newbie. I did play some online terrorist hunt and deathmatch and found them fun, but nothing really special. Overall I was glad to have played it, however short the game was.

Next-gen Fantasy Football

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:31:50 -0600

EA has decided to take fantasy football to the next-gen consoles. Rather than use just your PC to manage and monitor your teams, you can use either your Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 to draft your teams. The draft application will use assets from Madden 09 and EA's web site to include videos and commentary on the players. There is also going to be a scoring and tracking application that lets you see how your team is doing either fullscreen or splitscreen with video of the games.

Lost in many of the reviews of Madden 09 is the ability to import your fantasy football team from EA's online site and play with those players. Now I'm not a big Madden fan because my experiences with that game on the PC have been so bad I'm reluctant to play it elsewhere. But this feature sounds like a nice tie-in and a use of that internet connection the consoles have.

Brutal Legend and Ghostbusters are not cancelled...

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:30:22 -0600

Yesterday, I posted an article about the press release from Activision that through its lack of statement implied some of the upcoming games were in trouble. It turns out that this was a misinterpretation of the communication, and the publishers of a couple of the games have come back to reinforce that their titles are just fine.

A Sierra spokesperson stated that the upcoming Ghostbusters game is not canceled and is simply not being published as an Activision title. Double Fine (Tim Schafer's development house) also stated the same thing for Brutal Legend.

The problem is that while the games are still in development there is a distinctive lack of detail regarding who will ultimately publish these titles. I have faith that these games will be published, but I still question the decisions being made at Activision and EA.

Activision/Vivendi Merger has possible casulties...

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:00:27 -0600

A press release from the now merged companies released yesterday indicates some bleak news for fans of the Sierra brand. Basically, the powers that be at the new Activision have decided to embrace sequels of Spyro and Crash Bandicoot while leaving games like Tim Schafer's Brutal Legend, Ghostbusters and World in Conflict in some doubt.

The news has been touched on by the folks over at Joystiq, Shacknews and Worthplaying (and probably others but those are the blogs I am currently reading.) The general consensus from the comments is that this seems to be a boneheaded move on the part of the new Activision and I tend to agree. I appreciate the fact that creating and publishing games is a costly endeavor, but focusing simply on publishing sequels is not the way to go. Sure they have World of Warcraft now, and that 8 million pound gorilla will continue to generate cash until the end of time. Ultimately that may explain the short sightedness of this decision.

Activision is in a great position to step away from the likes of EA and publish some titles that are not just sequels of series that have gone way past their prime. They have a steady cash flow and can offer some unique titles to consumers, but alas they are choosing to focus on (and I have pulled the quote from the press release):

"We are very excited to add such recognizable and successful brands as Crash Bandicoot, Ice Age and Spyro, which reinforce our leadership position in movie-based and family entertainment video games."
"We have conducted a thorough review of Vivendi Games' brand portfolio and are retaining those franchises and titles that are a strong fit with our long-term product strategy. We are reviewing our options regarding those titles that we will not be publishing."

This comes from Mike Griffith who is the CEO of Activision, and I think it speaks for the state of the industry. My hope is that games like Brutal Legend and World in Conflict find other avenues for publishing including self publishing via Steam since I have little hope for the big publishers any longer.

KOTOR Online coming?

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 09:25:10 -0600

According to reports (now a week old, I know) EA's CEO confirmed that Bioware and Lucasarts are working on Knights of the Old Republic Online - an MMO set in the KOTOR universe.

All I can say is WoW. As in, look out Activision Blizzard - somebody is gunning for World of Warcraft customers. I'm not naive enough to believe they will steal so many customers as to sink the wildly succesful product, but this is the first MMO I've heard of that might actually have an impact on them. All the rest (Tabula Rasa, Age of Conan, Lord of the Rings Online, and even the upcoming Warhammer Online) are developed to be 'more of the same.' Sure, there are suble differences, but they most follow the same WoW formula (and why not - it works!) But I sincerely doubt Bioware will be creating a WoW-clone. But here are a few questions this raises in my mind:

Will this be PC only or will we see consoles included? KOTOR plays just fine on XBOX and I can see this being a big revenue opportunity if they can get console players and PC players online together.
Does this spell the end of Star Wars Galaxies? I know that MMO has been declining for years, but I wouldn't be surprised if this puts the last nail in its coffin. I know KOTOR is set thousands of years before A New Hope but only the most die-hard Star Wars fans would stick with Galaxies, right?

I hope we hear more about it soon!

All Kinds of Awesome: Fallout 3 Trailer

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:13:43 -0600

You're going to buy it anyway, but here is some validation for you:

A few I've played recently...

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:39:32 -0600

Here are my takes on a few games I've played recently...

Bridge It by Chronic Logic. Wow, what an addictively simple game. They have been building bridge-building simulations for years and this one features top-quality graphics. I see they have an even newer game called Bridge Construction Set but I haven't played it yet.

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness by Penny Arcade and Hothead Games. I played only the free demo, but it made me want to buy the full game (I just haven't gotten around to it yet.) It's a game that combines some classic adventure-style gaming with some very simple old-school RPG party combat. The comedy by the Penny Arcade team is what makes it worth playing, I think, more than the gameplay it self.

Audiosurf. A simple game with a fantastic premise - it scans your MP3 (or WAV or iTunes) files and builds a puzzle racer out of them, then allows you to race the track while the song plays. It's brilliant and highly addictive. I purchased this one after playing it for about 30 minutes and I've had a blast since.

Hellgate: London by Flagship Studios. I played through the game completely once, then took a break. The game has a full single or multi-player compaign you can play through for just the purchase price, and extra content for monthly subscribers. Upon returning I have found the gameplay tuned and what looks like a low level of subscriber content. I'm glad I didn't subscribe so far.

Mythos by Flagship Studios. Free to play beta, with a pretty complete game so far. It has gone through some big changes, but throughout has remained fun. I just can't help but feel I've played this game before. Oh wait, I have, only it was called Diablo 2. Seriously, this is a D2 clone and not much else. Sure they have added some crafting (wihch is kinda lame) and random missions, but overall there isn't that much to it beyond simple hack-n-slash. Of course, that is a fun combination and it works here. If you are a D2 fan, this one should give you that lovin' feelin' again.

Red vs Blue: PSA #36

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:55:59 -0600

Oh man, that's what you call good comedy right here!