tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082639490248015852024-02-18T22:48:38.436-05:00Ramblings of a GamerJosh DeWolfe. Everything video games.Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.comBlogger65125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-76228295861706124662016-04-17T18:22:00.001-04:002016-04-17T19:44:55.770-04:00Don't Take Advantage of my Passion<span style="color: white;">There is an article that is making waves recently in the world of technology and game development. <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/16/game-developers-must-avoid-the-wage-slave-attitude/" target="_blank">This article</a> by one Alex. St. John makes a lot of assertions about the state of the games industry, and more specifically, the mentality of those within it. He talks a lot about how privileged a position it is to exist within this space, how games are an art and should be a labour of love, and he uses the term "wage-slave" a lot, among other things. To be frank, this article is probably one of the most disgustingly disillusioned things I've ever read, and I've got a lot to say on the matter.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Just off the top, I want to address the concept of game development being a privileged career. Next Mr. St.John is going to tell me that I need to eat all of my greens because children are starving in Africa. This is a common fallacy - that I don't have the right to complain about my position in life because there are others who have it worse, as though the fact that I sleep in a bed with a roof over my head removes my right to be treated fairly in life. Yes. Game Development is a fantastic vocation in a lot of ways, but if you are trying to tell me that having a cool job somehow means I have fewer rights, then you can kindly fuck off. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">On a similar notes, in his article Mr. St.John describes Game Development as "pushing a mouse for a living", in addition to asserting that concepts like work-life-balance, burnout, and being creatively tapped out are all nonsense, because this job involves sitting at a desk making video games. One could only assume this is all coming from someone without any <i>real</i> idea of what working in the industry is like, and yet his own Wikipedia article seems to think that while working at Microsoft he "was fired in 1997 when exhaustion left him unable to perform his duties both at work and at home". I've personally seen people walk away from Game Development because of just how draining it is, mentally and creatively. Why on Earth would anyone rather work at a supermarket, if Game Development was really so easy?</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">I think the most egregious part of St.John's article however, is the idea that devs should not be in the industry if they "can't love all 80 hours/week of it". I'm not sure how anyone can claim a profession is not strenuous, and then immediately go on to claim you're doing it wrong if you aren't doing it for 80 hours a week, but there we are. St.John seems to be very convinced that creating games is an act of passion, that if you can't dedicate your entire being to it without worrying about the sacrifices, then you don't belong to be here. Again, he throws around the phrase "wage-slave" constantly. In other words, the message of this article can be summed up in saying "you have a cool job, you should be thankful for that, rather than complaining about pay or burnout or hours". This is some of the biggest bullshit I have ever read, and equates to saying that you should let people take advantage of your passion, because if you don't someone else will gladly be taken advantage of in your place.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">What infuriates me the most about what St.John suggests, is that it's actually extremely damaging to the industry that I love. Games is still a relatively small industry - it's one that has significantly more people trying to break in, than it has positions to be filled. If you look at pretty much any growing industry, you will see the same thing - the communities that grow the fastest and the healthiest are <i>always</i> the ones that treat their assets fairly. It doesn't matter how much passion someone has, you can't expect someone to dedicate their life to their craft if you treat them like shit. The number of bustling youths trying to get into this field is ridiculous, and this is already an industry that is, on average, underpaid, lacking in benefits, and unstable. Nobody would be here to begin with if they didn't have passion, so maybe don't take advantage of them because this is a "privileged job".</span></span>Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-7834809921439453952015-12-21T21:28:00.002-05:002015-12-21T21:28:54.207-05:00Fire Emblem: Fates' Problematic Business Model<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsBQNk_pn2SZuLwXswFA6JsUppC_pgpbJObj4yafzlSYACatfXgRbBjp08vwQnjDC4AxPhgEKHSGmSS2WPMW7-WgJr4qVPnfj_YKInqPg5JiNHmqHDScGFKJZxamKMj45KJUlX9uFxEKc/s1600/fire-emblem-fates-cast-banner-artwork-3ds-official-nintendo-646x325.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsBQNk_pn2SZuLwXswFA6JsUppC_pgpbJObj4yafzlSYACatfXgRbBjp08vwQnjDC4AxPhgEKHSGmSS2WPMW7-WgJr4qVPnfj_YKInqPg5JiNHmqHDScGFKJZxamKMj45KJUlX9uFxEKc/s640/fire-emblem-fates-cast-banner-artwork-3ds-official-nintendo-646x325.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">The concept of having multiple versions of the same game is not a new one. Anyone who knows anything about video games is probably aware of the age old Pokemon trope of multiple releases. You've got your Red and Blue, your Gold and Silver, your Ruby and Sapphire, etc. So it seems that with the most recent iteration of Fire Emblem, Intelligent Systems has decided that they wanted to give that approach a try, and thus we have the 'Birthright' and the 'Conquest' versions respectively. The problem with this is that these two concurrent releases have a little bit more differentiating them than a few unique Pokemon.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">The concept of Fates, is that the player assumes the role of Corrin, a child born into the Hoshido family, who was kidnapped at birth by the Nohr family.When fate brings Corrin back in contact with the Hoshido they must choose whether to side with their birth family or the family that raised them. An interesting choice indeed, and one which sends the player down very different paths. Each side has a totally different narrative, different sets of characters rally to your army, the whole nine yards. What's more, the playstyles are even different. The Hoshido path plays similarly to Fire Emblem: Awakening, wherein the player can move around the map and fight battles at their leisure. However the Nohr path is more similar to the older style of Fire Emblem games, with a limited amount of battles that can be fought, and a lot more emphasis on making decisions based on your resources.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRlDUWJ0KzftTxWQP9odxLfmFndQEgvjmSft1bXoKTr8q500wiZQzmaqUPMqrmzOsboWmPFCzmPK0Rhb3nuyI_uPWtGDbQUMbQNbInONF861rmhqD9uCKpW6TtTwfoG_Chdn7zBLCju7g/s1600/fire-emblem-fates.jpg" imageanchor="1"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRlDUWJ0KzftTxWQP9odxLfmFndQEgvjmSft1bXoKTr8q500wiZQzmaqUPMqrmzOsboWmPFCzmPK0Rhb3nuyI_uPWtGDbQUMbQNbInONF861rmhqD9uCKpW6TtTwfoG_Chdn7zBLCju7g/s640/fire-emblem-fates.jpg" width="640" /></span></a><br />
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<span style="color: white;">This all sounds good and well, but there's one huge problem in all of this, that you may have surmised by now. You see, there is no real choice. Each path is exclusive to one of the games' versions, the Hoshido path being exclusive to the Birthright version, and the Nohr path being exclusive to the Conquest version. In other words, the most important decision in the game is made before you've even paid for the game. It's less like the difference between Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue, and more like if say, Pokemon Gold only let you go to Johto and Pokemon Silver only let you go to Kanto. It's like if World of Warcraft had an 'Alliance' and a 'Horde' version. It's... apparently nowhere near as controversial as I would expect it to be?</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">As you might have figured out, I'm really not a fan of this approach. For the well established Fire Emblem fan it might not be that big a deal. You either choose the path you want, or you can take advantage of the deal which allows you to download the second game for $20 off, and get both paths. However if you aren't in the know, then what? What if you decide you don't like one crew but picked the wrong version? What if you end up with a different version than all your friends? It's like that dread-filled moment where you realize you've picked the wrong dialogue option, except you're committed to a 40-hour mistake, and the only way to fix it is to hopefully exchange your game or else you're out $40. Or maybe people will go with it and not care, I don't know. It seems to me that whatever the case me be though, putting such an important decision before the player has even had a chance to put the game in their 3DS seems like bad design, even if it's not bad business.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">But maybe I'm just jumping to conclusions. Truth be told, I'll probably end up buying and playing both versions. And after all, nobody ever really complained about Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons, did they? I suppose the issue comes down to, the Oracle games were very clearly intended to be separate from the beginning, whilst Birthright/Conquest kind of seem like a single game that grew out of scope, and can make more money separately. The fact that both games share the first 6 chapters before they branch off doesn't really help the case. Intelligent Systems and Nintendo swear up and down that <i>Fates</i> simply doesn't fit within the confines of a single game, that each game is a full experience. Maybe they are right, and maybe I'll believe them after I've played the game. I just hope the number of people burned by this decision is minimal.</span>Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-78234836712529662162015-10-30T00:25:00.001-04:002015-12-21T16:53:17.624-05:00How Good is the PS4's Streaming?<span style="color: white;">One of the things that I've been trying to do a little bit more of lately, is streaming. I watch things on <a href="http://twitch.tv/">Twitch.tv</a> daily, but I've never really consistently streamed there myself. So since I've been using my PS4 a lot lately, I thought that I would give it's in-built streaming capabilities a shot. I knew going in that it wasn't going to be an ideal setup, but if it was at least easy, then that counts for a lot for someone as mega-lazy as myself. So after messing with it for a little over a week, here are my findings...</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">To begin with, the service really is pretty easy. Connect up your Twitch account, hit share, select start broadcast, and you're pretty much good to go. Right from the start it's less than ideal, as expected, though. The PS4 can only stream the game feed directly, which makes quality settings and such very simple, but there is basically zero customization at any step. The only video options you have are handful of preset quality settings, and obviously you cannot use fancy stream overlays and such. There is the option to use the PS4 Eye camera deal as both a webcam and a microphone, but that's about it. Being as I didn't really want to spring for a PS4-only webcam or a proper capture card, it was video feed only for me. This also comes with the consequence of not being able to see PS4 UI objects such as achievement toasts, which is a small issue but kind of unfortunate.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">In the end though, it was easy enough that I was ok with all that. I could just open up a chill stream, not feel like I need to talk or present, I can just play and respond to chat on my computer located right beside the PS4. However there remains one massive issue, which is the fact that each individual game can decide when it can and cannot be recorded. This goes for streaming, but also even simple things like screenshots, or the constant video encoding that the console would normally do. Near as I can tell this is because of potential copyright issues, and possibly because of spoilers, but either way it's super annoying.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">To be honest, the blocked broadcasting is a bit of a dealbreaker. I was able to stream 25 hours of Dragon Quest Heroes unimpeded, but past a certain point in the game streaming was blocked entirely. This means I have most of the game sitting on my Twitch channel, and then suddenly nothing. That game footage will never be completed. I wanted to stream Guitar Hero Live, and that could not be broadcast at all (admittedly not surprising). Now I suppose I understand why it has to be that way, but it's a huge impediment to the service. What's worse is that as far as I know, there is no way of knowing ahead of time if you're going to be able to stream an entire game, if the game will block streaming entirely, if you'll get cut off half way, etc. That's not listed on the game box. And all told, because of that alone, I don't see the service as being worth using. If I want to continue streaming PS4 content, I will be buying a capture card.</span>Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-11856627344278955302014-10-05T16:10:00.000-04:002014-10-05T16:10:15.832-04:00Thoughts on The Last of Us<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMIJa8_mhPu7ZRvHo20k5te9K4H7_gT5yH5dmeBf0d9VkdFZdmaM2rz-xou3LJILQmm8G8BcIgUIIpXzLI7ePwUoh9O27Rx2EHW0N1JON0XCkLOK_GPgiLZDTA5SObKoccsFJZ9CXGai8/s1600/the-last-of-us-wallpaper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMIJa8_mhPu7ZRvHo20k5te9K4H7_gT5yH5dmeBf0d9VkdFZdmaM2rz-xou3LJILQmm8G8BcIgUIIpXzLI7ePwUoh9O27Rx2EHW0N1JON0XCkLOK_GPgiLZDTA5SObKoccsFJZ9CXGai8/s1600/the-last-of-us-wallpaper.jpg" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">By now, everyone knows what The Last of Us is. It is a post-apocalyptic third person survival-horror action game. It is the most critically acclaimed game of 2013. It is one of the most notable games of the last console generation. According to some it's even a contender for the best game of all time. All this from the well loved folks at Naughty Dog who also brought us Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter, and Uncharted as well. It is for these reasons that I decided to give the game a whirl, knowing full well that this type of game is not at all my cup of tea. And so here I am today, giving you my impressions of a game that I played primarily because of the hype.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">One of the things that gets talked about most is probably the game's narrative, so let's start there. In a lot of ways the tale that The Last of Us weaves is actually very unoriginal. It's hardly the first work of fiction to explore the the lows and highs of a post-apocalyptic society, and what actually happens is rarely unexpected. What the game does do very well however is weave narrative into the gameplay. You learn just as much about Joel from his actions then you do from his words. What's more, these are really <i>your </i>actions. All of his most brutal moments come at your command, and watching Joel beat a man to death with a brick at your behest can feel legitimately disturbing. And that's the point. Joel is a bad person, and unlike a lot of games where the anti-hero is glorified as some badass, there is no pretending that Joel is doing anything more than what he thinks he needs to in order to survive.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjahYCpXr13aXZblW83N7uIgaSAYLrcSEYwiQm0lblWSPhYidl1xCGKl3rINMO07XD_8q4SAYyRj0xZ2Lh9fTVx1SMKyBPOp57THvl4Lri6eVItJPtlqXQKRUUVp_3WB85nn5Eqe5FpAaE/s1600/TLOU1-1024x576.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjahYCpXr13aXZblW83N7uIgaSAYLrcSEYwiQm0lblWSPhYidl1xCGKl3rINMO07XD_8q4SAYyRj0xZ2Lh9fTVx1SMKyBPOp57THvl4Lri6eVItJPtlqXQKRUUVp_3WB85nn5Eqe5FpAaE/s1600/TLOU1-1024x576.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">Now, one of the things that this narrative helps accomplish, is a very strong atmosphere. Together with some very well built environments and a well written script, it's easy to get sucked into this dreary world. It looks good, but it also <i>feels</i> good, and believable to boot. Said world is, unsurprisingly, mostly empty (which is in itself a form of worldbuilding), and yet it seems like there is always something interesting to look at or for the characters to discuss. The environments feel very organic, and so do the actors' performances. Together between the games' narrative and atmosphere it feels like it is constantly taking you feel a ride, and I found it pretty common to experience genuine shock or relief or terror when it was appropriate. However it's interesting to note, these moments were always as a result of gameplay. There are some moments which essentially become glorified walking simulators, but they still make you feel the weight of the games' situations far more than the cutscenes do.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">The game manages to provide a fair variety in these situations, too. As the game goes on it introduces new things to worry about at a fair pace. Not a great one, but a fair one. Some sections drag on longer than I would like, but in general it feels like things are paced such that they never get overly tired. After playing for a while however, things can start to feel pretty formulaic (forage > infected > forage > thugs). Where The Last of Us does this better than say, the Uncharted games, is that things like puzzle solving and platforming feel like they blend into the foraging section of the game much more organically. Or perhaps the other way around. Because you are <i>always</i> looking for resources, and you aren't spending your time climbing up giant statues and solving ancient puzzles, it feels like you are really just navigating the environment rather than playing "the platforming segment". The Last of Us does have much less variance in puzzles and platforming than the Uncharted games however, and so with lass variance in things to do, the formula can get old quicker in my experience.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Foraging in itself however, is actually pretty grand, too. I think I can honestly say that it is my favorite part of the gameplay. It feels like hunting about the environment for materials is a legitimately very important part of the game, which helps sell the survival aspect of this broken world very well. Whereas in other games exploration tends to be a way to get bonuses that give you prestige or extra power, The Last of Us makes exploration feel like a necessity. Exploring isn't a way to become more overpowered than you would otherwise be. If you don't find enough ammo or bits to make the med packs you need, you will die. Or at the least you will make things very hard for yourself in the coming sections. It also helps that the environments are legitimately interesting to explore, for the reasons stated earlier. Unfortunately though, this is more or less where the gameplay and I stop seeing eye to eye.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Now I'm not saying that the gameplay is bad. If anything I've spoken pretty glowingly of it for the past several paragraphs. However I also mentioned how The Last of Us isn't really my type of game. Try as I might, I could never really find much love for the game's stealth-y horror-y elements, and they typically take precedence over the action-y survive-y bits. I do appreciate the narrative value that comes with the stealth-centric gameplay. However, any narrative gains from this is probably offset by how completely oblivious enemies are to your allies running all over the place and making a monolithic din. But honestly, I just felt like I just wanted to shoot things most of the time. This is in part because of my own impatience, but probably also in part because the game can be frustrating at times. It's checkpoints are not very forgiving, and it's not unheard of to die for stupid reasons like say, your partner physically blocking you from going where you need to go. All said I just found the combat to be generally frustrating and not really for me.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">So where does all of this leave us? Well, we have a game that is spectacularly put together in just about every conceivable way. The Last of Us doesn't really innovate in any way, but it is a testament to the value of polish and attention to detail. To be honest, I'm still unsure of how much I actually like it, but I do believe that it deserves most of the accolades it has received, and that whatever my feelings are on the game, it's hard to deny that it is a fantastic piece of work. I think it's interesting that for a lot of the game I wished I could just experience it as a movie, and yet at the same time, a movie would not have had as strong a narrative without intermixing with the gameplay. Regardless of how much I might have enjoyed the game, it is a strong case for the strengths video games have over other forms of media, for this reason.</span><br />
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<a href="http://i.imgur.com/xPoxqSq.jpg" target="_blank">Here are some notes I took on the game.</a>Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-49649646715733169552014-07-04T20:11:00.001-04:002014-07-04T20:11:46.349-04:00A Love Song to Papers, Please<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXbqkuWPGdGRVAI2hxOShAs4p4DwXWYg-Xh6ucL9ni4plXyHteEVVF10Kgc9D5VWjsVNiNy2ZcCzA5XsYLb2J_SYehPLQc5SNpucxB3N2gHXFz4TISSSr40P9c9t2zyOAL9AwcdPzht6k/s1600/papers_please.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXbqkuWPGdGRVAI2hxOShAs4p4DwXWYg-Xh6ucL9ni4plXyHteEVVF10Kgc9D5VWjsVNiNy2ZcCzA5XsYLb2J_SYehPLQc5SNpucxB3N2gHXFz4TISSSr40P9c9t2zyOAL9AwcdPzht6k/s1600/papers_please.jpg" height="298" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><i>Papers, Please </i>is a weird game. The story of how this post came to exist is maybe even weirder. Papers, Please originally came onto my radar about a year ago when a demo of the game was released. It struck me as whimsical and strangely enticing; a game I definitely wanted to buy but was not in a rush to do so. Well Steam's Summer Sale solved that problem, and I've found playing the game to be an even more interesting experience. Having only put a few hours into the game I didn't want to do a proper analysis of it yet, but then I started watching the most recent season of Nickelodeon's <i>The Legend of Korra</i>. A befuddling tangent to be sure. I noticed a surprising number of thematic similarities between the two and was going to write a comparison, because I thought it was very unexpected and interesting. However in trying to conceptualize that post, I couldn't figure out a way to write it without dedicating most the article to gushing about Papers, Please. So, I'm just going to do that for now instead!</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Ok, so what exactly <i>is</i> Papers, Please anyways? Well the concept is simple. You are an immigration officer working at the border of the fictional country of Arstotzka. Day in and day out, people hand you their papers and you must decide who can and cannot enter the country. As the days march by the political landscape gets more complicated, and so does your job. On day 1 you're just checking passports, but soon enough you're cross-checking 3-4 documents, the person's appearance and story, wanted criminal lists, etc. The difficulty in processing each immigrant increases, but your always payed $5 per person you get right. At the end of the day you go home, count your pay, and hope you have enough to pay for rent, food, heat, and whatever other expenses you may have. The next morning you wake up, read the headlines, and do it all over again.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWB0n_eVtqaVX0sK0ct3XW5jDjjc9lfqKU8wpJbES6wZaF3HQhsMwRlzg22QktTbv2XrD_4tEx9ZYa-4ceQQUrPN7gKG5ZsOVzqG-iLjO8CNO2x1JkaOiSbmeaeSHudeufgUA2L8JTYcM/s1600/Papers-please-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWB0n_eVtqaVX0sK0ct3XW5jDjjc9lfqKU8wpJbES6wZaF3HQhsMwRlzg22QktTbv2XrD_4tEx9ZYa-4ceQQUrPN7gKG5ZsOVzqG-iLjO8CNO2x1JkaOiSbmeaeSHudeufgUA2L8JTYcM/s1600/Papers-please-2.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">Obviously this sounds fairly boring, but it's design is surprisingly brilliant and immersive. Let me walk you through the thought process as you are playing this game. It starts off, and you are trying to get a hang for how the game works. You quickly realize that you can just barely make ends meet, and that maybe tomorrow you won't. So the next day comes, and you decide you are going to go at it hard to make sure you earn enough money. In your fervor you miss something, and your pay gets docked. You can't pay for the heat, and next thing you know little Timmy is has a cold. You quickly learn to loathe the clickity-clack sound of the tickets that pop out whenever you make a mistake. Maybe it's worth it to make sure you do your job properly. This is a game anyways right? Clearly the goal is to process everyone correctly and make enough money to provide for your family. Just put your head down, check every bit of information, and you'll surely be fine.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">But as the days go by, you begin to question this. You're soon checking so much information that you can't process it all quickly enough, and you start wondering if you shouldn't have more empathy. You start forgetting to check for things like fraudulent seals. Maybe you start putting less effort into checking Arstotzkan citizens, as they have fewer documents to verify and are usually legit. Maybe when a wife doesn't have the documents to enter with her husband, you're willing to give her a pass. But what happens when the next morning you read a headline about criminals entering the country? Is that your fault? Do you care as long as your pay isn't affected? What if you were bribed? What about people with cryptic requests? If some guy asks you to pass along an important document, do you trust him? How do you identify who to give it to? What if you give it to the wrong person and it increases terrorist attacks? After all, bombings shut down the checkpoint for the rest of the day, you certainly can't pay the bills working half days.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">These are just some of the questions you have to answer while playing Papers, Please, and this is why it's kind of brilliant. In the world that is Arstotzka's border all you do is drag some papers around and stamp the passport with the red or the green. But you have all the power, and you can do whatever you want with it. The game provides you with a framework, rewards, punishments, incentives, but never hard rules or end goals. Nobody is telling you what to do. Everyone has their own idea of what they <i>want</i> you to do, and they will reward/punish you accordingly, but in the end of the day the decision is always yours. You have to weigh what you value and decide how to best achieve it. Maybe you don't care about politics or emotional immigrants or cryptic cults, you just want to put your head down and provide for your family. Maybe you want to unlock all of the bonus medals, so you look for those weird situations with special circumstances. Maybe you actually don't care about your family, you just want to make sure all the terrorists get in.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Who would ever suspect such a simple game to have such immersive gameplay? How is it that a game about doing paperwork has the best morality system I've seen in any game? You might not even realize it's there because there are no points or meters, you don't even have good vs. bad. You just have a system where your actions have real, direct, discernible consequences. You're choices aren't even that complex, you are essentially answering yes or no a couple hundred times. This is the game's key. It doesn't have deep gameplay, it doesn't have an epic backstory, it's simple. It focuses on narrative and immersion at the cost of everything else. If anything, it's simplicity just accentutes how mundane a job you are working, and how even a thoroughly monotonous existence like immigration officer is one full of meaningful choices.</span>Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-9338022775717287212014-06-18T17:58:00.002-04:002014-06-18T17:58:32.090-04:00Jak and Daxter vs Jak II<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO4CgBcsnkVhe2ICZzpb3ZNn3zNANrajEHi6WOCQZMfN2XyGWRsK5aaPZcOHnlZawFCur9zV4k8MPXOgxWyr7Mi5TcgG1devOOZMK25Oxr0zbv29wXqMD5SqDzZZFsP4h7xJKvJxwkuzM/s1600/jak_logo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO4CgBcsnkVhe2ICZzpb3ZNn3zNANrajEHi6WOCQZMfN2XyGWRsK5aaPZcOHnlZawFCur9zV4k8MPXOgxWyr7Mi5TcgG1devOOZMK25Oxr0zbv29wXqMD5SqDzZZFsP4h7xJKvJxwkuzM/s1600/jak_logo.png" height="384" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">The age of the Playstation and the Playstation 2 is one that I think a lot of people look upon with much fondness. There are a lot of old Playstation classics that came out of that time which people will talk about to this day. One of the things that stick out in my mind the most was eagerly awaiting my monthly edition of Playstation Magazine, a publication that often had something to say about the newest Ratchet and Clank or Jak and Daxter game. It seemed like the two series had something of a rivalry going on, and the gamers loved it. At the time I was happy enough playing nothing but RPGs every day, but these days I feel a compulsion to go back and see what the fuss was all about. Luckily, this is made pretty easy by the existence of HD collections. I rather enjoyed my time with the Sly Cooper collection, and now the time for Jak and Daxter has arrived. At the time of this writing, I have completed the original, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy and am about half way through Jak II. The purpose of this article is to compare the two, because I feel like there is a lot to say on the matter.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">So let's start off by talking about the original game. Jak and Daxter is ultimately, a pretty simple game. It's a game about exploration, collecting pickups, and platforming. It does all of these things quite well, boasting a surprisingly large world that is entirely seamless (unless you are warping) and more to the point, well constructed. The levels are complex, but not to the point that they are difficult to navigate even without any form of map. The areas are colorful and interesting, and the same is true of the game on the whole. It has a lighthearted cheer about it that's quite endearing, and it doesn't bog you down with superfluous things. Story is minimal; the characters are interesting but don't overstay their welcome. Overall the game just compels you to not only play, but to perfect it. It's very easy to open up your menu and see that you've collected 142/150 precursor orbs and 5/7 power cells in an area. Finding what's left may be a little tricky, but the counter both tells you where to look, and encourages you to do so.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">That's not to say it's a perfect game by any means. Jak's attack animations have a lot of character, but the game's actual combat feels pretty hamfisted, and I don't know that it really adds anything to the experience. Like many PS2 era games, Jak and Daxter also suffers from some camera woes. It's not especially bad, but the camera movement feels somewhat leaden, and situations where you can't look where you want are pretty frequent as a result. There are also a fair number of vehicle sections, which are pretty decent for the most part, but can be pretty frustrating at times because of difficult platforming which is often coupled with instant death mechanics. I found that most of the time when I died, it felt like I hadn't really done anything particularly wrong. Thankfully the game has pretty plentiful checkpoints and so it's easy to get right back in there and try again. In the end I was entertained enough that I never really wanted to stop playing, and there was never any question that I was going to 100% complete the game.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Now let's look at Jak II... So in the sequel, Jak is turned into an angsty badboy, given a voice, imbued with dark powers, given guns, placed into a dystopian city... You get my point. The game's entire feel is changed. It's not fun and carefree anymore, instead it feels like it's trying really hard to be dark and edgy and I really don't like the change. But that's just my personal opinion. Thematic changes aside, the biggest difference between the games is that while Jak and Daxter was a free roam collectathon, Jak II is a mission based open world. The thing is that this world is just boring, needlessly windy, and only really serves to create busywork. You go from one end to the other, watch some kind of scene that's try too hard to be gritty, then you go back across the city to complete your mission. Along the way you'll probably bump into a guard, the entire city will go into "hunt down Jak" mode (which they may or may not eventually abandon, for some undiscernable reason). When you get to the entrance to another area you won't see a loading screen, but you will sit in an empty room waiting for a giant door to open. Everything about this city just irks me, and you spend the vast majority of your time there.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Playing Jak II immediately after Jak and Daxter, I feel like the game flow has none of the elegance, and the overall theme has none of the character and charm. The areas aren't as well put together, the collectibles are fewer, you don't have the same collectible counter to drive you to find them. The game's focus has shifted significantly towards more combat, which doesn't really feel any better than in the first game. If anything it feels worse because there are very few checkpoints in the game, meaning death usually puts you back at the start of the level with all enemies being respawned. On top of the lack of checkpoints, the game's overall difficulty seems to be higher to boot, and the two combined lead to significantly more frustrating moments. The game's story is much more in your face, and it always feels like it's trying way too hard to be gritty and edgy. The vehicles are a lot more annoying to handle, they blow up easily, and you have to drive them much more frequently to get around the city, complete races etc...</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Ultimately the point I'm trying to make here is that Jak II feels nothing like Jak and Daxter. Almost everything I liked about the first game is now gone or altered beyond recognition. It's pretty apparent that Jak II is trying to be a completely different kind of game. That isn't inherently a bad thing; I think there's something to be said about managing your player's expectations, but different doesn't mean bad. That said, the truth of the matter is that I'm just not enjoying my time with Jak II that much. It's not like it's a bad game per se, but I find it to be a pretty annoying experience that is somewhat lacking in actual fun parts. I don't know how the sequel turned into this <i>thing</i>, maybe it's just me, Jak II has a reputation of being a good game. I suppose I'll just have to keep playing, maybe I'll find some fun in it yet.</span>Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-22745856713862002102014-06-11T23:15:00.001-04:002014-06-11T23:15:49.766-04:00E3 2014 Impressions<span style="color: white;">Another year, another E3. Being as the PS4 and XBox One are now out in the wild, this year was never going to be as exciting as <a href="http://ramblingofagamer.blogspot.ca/2013/06/e3-2013-sony-microsoft-and-nintendo.html" target="_blank">the last</a>, but I for one was pretty interested to see how Sony and Microsoft would follow up the blowout that was E3 2013. For most people, this year was probably about Nintendo. The Wii U has been struggling for almost 2 years now, and is only now beginning to pickup steam. Mario Kart 8 is a big success, Smash Bros 4 is rapidly building excitement, and there were a lot of big Nintendo franchises people were hoping to see this year. Ubisoft and EA were there too, as they always are. For some reason. I saw it all, and even <a href="http://pastebin.com/c4WwVyHk" target="_blank">took notes</a> this year, so here are my thoughts on E3 2014.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Unfortunately for Microsoft, it seems like they are still battling the perception that there is nothing to play on the XBox One, and thus no reason to buy one. I think this is expected so early in a consoles life, now that multiplatform releases are so prevalent, but Microsoft seems to be struggling with it a bit more than their competitors thanks in part to their focus on non-games during the consoles reveal. Microsoft put on a pretty good conference though. They focused on the games, showing a good 20 or so titles, including some interesting exclusives. Sunset Overdrive still looks like a wonderful collection of color and smarm, Platinum Games' Scalebound is sure to be a hit (because they are Platinum Games and they cannot fail) and Ori the Blind Forest is intriguing to me. I'm sure the Halo Collection and Halo 5 were very exciting to people, too.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">My biggest complaint though, is that I don't think Microsoft really managed to break their image of generic games for college guys. Not a lot of what I saw in this 90 minute presentation deviated from "shoot and race and stab people with up to 4 players!". I'm also becoming rapidly more annoyed by phrases like "available first on system x!" or "exclusive console release on system y!". I don't really want to watch a trailer of a game that is going to be included in another conference, I don't want to watch cinematic trailers, and I don't want to watch fake gameplay footage wherein some shmuck walks on stage and pretends they are actually playing the game. Microsoft definitely isn't the only one doing these things, but somehow it annoys me more when they do it. I suppose perhaps I am just biased against Microsoft, but there you have it.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">I seriously doubt that anyone went into EA's conference with very high expectations. They aren't a very well liked company on the whole, and being known as the sports/sims guys who buy other companies doesn't really help. I will say however that their conference started out very strongly. Showing Star Wars Battlefront before saying a word was certainly heartening. I'm not usually a fan of musical presentations at E3, but following Star Wars up with a lady with a Cello playing to the Dragon Age Inquisition footage was pretty awesome, too. In fact all of the Dragon Age footage was pretty awesome to see, and I'm sure a lot of people are very hyped about it. Unfortunately after Dragon Age EA's conference changed from a decent show, to what was in my opinion, the worst this year.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">But then EA started saying words, and it was all over. They managed to talk about a lot of games without actually saying much of anything about them, and they said a lot about their annual franchises which, let's be honest, there really isn't much to say. Bioware announced that they are working on a new Mass Effect and an unannounced game, Dawngate was confirmed to exist, and there was a lot of talk about sports, which I've always assumed the demographic for E3 really does not care about. I think my favorite was GOLF WITHOUT LIMITS on the Frostbyte engine, with no loading between holes! Mirror's Edge 2 was officially unveiled but again, we didn't get much out of it except that it is in fact Mirror's Edge 2. That said, it's good to see, as Mirror's Edge is a well loved game with a very unique and refreshing aesthetic and concept. Then we got a good look at Battlefield Hardline, which looks a lot like it did last year when it was Battlefield 4.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">Following in EA's footsteps came Ubisoft. Historically their conferences have been about little more than Assassin's Creed + awkward live performance + something, and has hinged on being quirky and French as well as the divisive Aisha Tyler as host. This year had seemingly more games than others, but still delivered on it's MO. Probably the thing that has stood out to me the most about Ubisoft at E3 this year as well as last, was the immaturity of their conference. E3 is the biggest platform video games have, and I think it reflects poorly on us when the face you choose to show to the media and investors is Aisha Tyler saying things like "It's hella fuckin smokey as shit, apparently it's 420 in this bitch". I held the same opinion last year when we opened with a trailer containing nudity. I'm definitely not trying to say these things aren't ok to have in games, but trying way too hard to be edgy isn't exactly the best way to legitimize our favorite pastime.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">Anyways, rant aside, Ubisoft's conference was at least a bit better than EA's but not by much. Far Cry 4 had no gameplay, but there was a very engrossing intro cinematic that I liked a lot. Conversely, Assassin's Creed Unity had both cinematic and gameplay, but a worse showing than in the Microsoft conference. Just Dance is yet another annual franchise, The Crew has yet to give me a reason to care about it and Shape Up seems like a mediocre exercise game, despite seeming better than what's already out there. The Division and Valiant Hearts win the award for most depressing trailers ever, which made me lose interest in the game and conference both. Ubisoft closed with Rainbow Six: Siege, which seemed like a decent enough game, but was so staged it's really hard to judge. I find it amusing that Ubisoft is also catching a lot of flak this E3 because of their use of a female hostage in the Rainbow Six demo, and the lack of playable females in Assassin's Creed. Oh Ubisoft. Maybe one day you will learn how to present yourself.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">Ahh Sony. The defending champion. They wrecked Microsoft last year with their cheaper, more powerful console and less restrictive feature list. This year the race is much closer, and Sony's conference much more complacent. There were a lot of subtle little jabs at Microsoft that came across as a bit distasteful to me, like throwing a punch after the bell has rung. Sony's conference was also really poorly paced, opening quite strongly, and then transitioning into boring PSN features and weird pieces of hardware. These new things may well be things people care about, but we aren't going to know until they are released, and as cool as YouTube is, it's not a great way to build E3 hype. The show ended with should be some pretty exciting games, but after the boring middle, there was no hype left.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">On the whole Sony showcased a more colorful selection of games, thanks to the likes of Entwined, Abzu and No Man's Sky. It had it's own share of exclusives too, with the likes of The Order 1866, Bloodborne and Uncharted 4, though none of their presence were very surprising. Unfortunately they were also stricken with PS4 ports of PS3 games (Grand Theft Auto V and the Last of Us), a trend that I find somewhat annoying. I also really enjoyed the tongue in cheek introductions that Magicka 2 and Grim Fandango got. I think a lot of people were hoping for some kind of showstopper from Sony, as well as some Kingdom Hearts of Final Fantasy. Unfortunately we didn't really get any of those. I think the closest we got to a showstopper was No Man's Sky, which is a game we saw at VGX and, despite being really pretty, struck me as kind of ephemeral.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYfxQs_2-6hVeneUsRgotKBoCr5nB9ztdxFUDZZ65Gunpb3so83l99E3icSZwBo7AdnENQgwGT5KwlEzTr_bXt5h9limEwuBSM_GtnkDtynGMg16HDqa4HJT9kuKIfAf0TecBuzlFsOGE/s1600/e3-2014-nintendo-650x330.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYfxQs_2-6hVeneUsRgotKBoCr5nB9ztdxFUDZZ65Gunpb3so83l99E3icSZwBo7AdnENQgwGT5KwlEzTr_bXt5h9limEwuBSM_GtnkDtynGMg16HDqa4HJT9kuKIfAf0TecBuzlFsOGE/s1600/e3-2014-nintendo-650x330.jpg" height="324" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">Finally, we have Nintendo. They have always kind of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRctny31UxQ" target="_blank">done their own thing</a> both in and out of E3. As I said at the beginning, there were a lot of eyes on Nintendo this year, especially after the previous 4 conferences all ranged from mediocre to straight up awful. I don't think Nintendo knocked it out of the park. I think a lot of people are still waiting for a lot of things from Nintendo. But I think they did well enough. They wasted a lot of time trying to convey just how much love and care goes into creating the games they showed. It is a sentiment that is important, but one that I think they conveyed without the diatribes, and one that doesn't really engage the viewer. What I will say is that this year Nintendo really made great use of the digital medium through which they were presenting, with Robot Chicken sketches and CG Reggie/Iwata.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">As expected, games like Hyrule Warriors and what little there was to say about Wii U Zelda generated a lot of hype. Smash Bros was surprisingly excited to see, despite there already being large amounts of information about it out there. I'm a really big fan of what Nintendo is doing to stylize their graphics in games like Yoshi's Wooly World and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse. Even if it's done to mask the Wii U's inferior graphics capabilities, it makes for a really cool aesthetic. Xenoblade Chronicles X is a game that I was really excited for going into this E3 (and still am) but the footage they showed during the presentation I found to be ugly and uninteresting. The clear surprise act here was Splatoon, though. A third person arena shooter wherin you control a squid trying to cover the arena in more ink than your opponent. It's a surprisingly clever and elegant game, I'm a little dubious as to how well it will actually sell though. The whole Nintendo aftershow kind of killed the hype for Splatoon though. In fact the multiple day long after show is pretty lame on the whole to me, but to each their own I suppose.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-size: x-large;">In Summary</span></h2>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-vcouNaUWu-td2tIExShOVGbxTircuF9svJxOtFUFrLxNR-YvB-0JZAiPHfTNSMLEMo57il5WOSnw3XvyF9CJTcb-bfJQSk9Sngu-Tg5k44Cpx1ATdlCN4lrJi-oafETuQkcEUAPaC4w/s1600/Nintendo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-vcouNaUWu-td2tIExShOVGbxTircuF9svJxOtFUFrLxNR-YvB-0JZAiPHfTNSMLEMo57il5WOSnw3XvyF9CJTcb-bfJQSk9Sngu-Tg5k44Cpx1ATdlCN4lrJi-oafETuQkcEUAPaC4w/s1600/Nintendo.jpg" height="352" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">So who won? What are the standouts? After the first day, this was Nintendo's E3 to lose. They definitely pulled it off in my mind. I didn't see as much as I wanted to from them, but their conference got me excited in a way that none of the others did. This E3 made me feel like soon my purchase of a Wii U will be justified, and there are at least 3 games that I definitely want to own ASAP, which is 30% of the games in Nintendo's presentation. Also Nintendo's Smash Bros Invitational is probably the most hyped I've ever been about E3, but that wasn't a conference so it doesn't count, ok? I think Microsoft had the second best presentation, but I find I am more interested in the games that Sony had to show. I didn't see any "must have"s out of either of them, but about 3-5 "would play"s out of each. On the whole I would say this E3 was pretty mediocre. But then every E3 seems to end up more mediocre than I hope. I would say that this year was slightly ahead of the average. I saw some cool games, I saw some cool presentation ideas, and I didn't see too much that actively offended me.</span></div>
Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-75078842165445307332014-05-27T18:52:00.001-04:002014-05-29T00:20:34.551-04:00Transistor Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgWkAwThAf3LcpsYID-__Hclb88DV_hdFAVVtlfs4I30icuM09Pv4kaHT3Ys-qgL8C2LyYtpJE1JSI_YZnSJPaFw6JDKKU6bOSr2ZgnF_4ZLZEqBfXBiNidik4pVx4bgumqi-cKOrmtKc/s1600/TransistorSword.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgWkAwThAf3LcpsYID-__Hclb88DV_hdFAVVtlfs4I30icuM09Pv4kaHT3Ys-qgL8C2LyYtpJE1JSI_YZnSJPaFw6JDKKU6bOSr2ZgnF_4ZLZEqBfXBiNidik4pVx4bgumqi-cKOrmtKc/s1600/TransistorSword.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">Back in mid 2011, a little company named Supergiant Games took the gaming world by surprise. As a company nobody had ever heard of, they created a game called Bastion. Bastion quickly garnered large amounts of praise for being a highly polished, artfully crafted and all around profoundly beautiful game, and has since been ported to a plethora of platforms. For a while, people wondered what was next for Supergiant Games, and there was some doubt that they would make a second title. After all, how do you follow Bastion? In March of 2013 this question was finally answered when similarly gorgeous cyberpunk action-RPG Transistor was revealed. A little over a year of intense anticipation later, and the game has finally been released. I played it, and here is what I think:</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">First out of the gate, I want to state that I played the PC version of the game, and to be honest, I wish that I had a PS4 to play it on instead. The downside to Transistor's stunning art style, is that there are no graphics options to speak of, which is a problem when I was struggling to run the game at 20 FPS. The game is definitely very pretty, but it doesn't <i>look</i> like a game that should be particularly taxing. Perhaps this is simply an issue that will be resolved down the road via patching. I also felt as though the keyboard controls did not work very well at all, which was surprising given that they were fine in Bastion. It felt in general like much of the game's controls were a little sluggish, but it's hard to say how much of that was the low frame rate, and how much was my 360 controller being bad. I will say that, I played the game on a PS4 at Pax, and none of these problems existed.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGU7Rx8giAvy_-x2sisYXNKHhvIjIQ-SseMoxJCdhkXNnXEK62bBMiGKNSWBlHo9hjKIz6jIkiu4CQlkUgzCGE3bnymhfE4r4X4DXnVg8QI2rlaOfbY5ijVGVt9FZ5ovUXjkXA6YlqteY/s1600/650x365x2014-05-18_00001.jpg.pagespeed.ic.gzFNVq0nSa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGU7Rx8giAvy_-x2sisYXNKHhvIjIQ-SseMoxJCdhkXNnXEK62bBMiGKNSWBlHo9hjKIz6jIkiu4CQlkUgzCGE3bnymhfE4r4X4DXnVg8QI2rlaOfbY5ijVGVt9FZ5ovUXjkXA6YlqteY/s1600/650x365x2014-05-18_00001.jpg.pagespeed.ic.gzFNVq0nSa.jpg" height="358" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">Platform complaints aside, the game is a joy to play. I mentioned earlier that Transistor is an action-RPG, and I am glad to say that it's combat is incredibly deep. It has two main things going for it: the function system, and the Turn() system. Functions are essentially your abilities, however each one can take one of three forms. You can assign it as an active ability, you can assign it as an upgrade to another function, or you can assign it as a passive. With 4 active abilities (each with 2 possible upgrade slots) and 4 passive slots, there is an astounding amount of flexibility in how you can choose to play. I also really like that, when your health bar depletes, rather than dyeing immediately, one of your functions overloads and temporarily becomes unavailable. It forces the player to replace that ability in the interim, and thus try out abilities and strategies that they maybe wouldn't otherwise use.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">To further add to the combat depth, is the turn() system I mentioned, which works something like the VATS system in Fallout 3. Essentially, any time you wish you can pause the combat, and input a certain number of actions, which you will then execute in quick succession. After turn() has concluded, you have to wait for it to recharge before you can use any abilities. This creates an interesting dance wherein you have to decide how much combat you want to do in real time, and when you want to use turn(). It allows you to use many attacks at once, but that isn't always what you want to be doing, and it leaves you vulnerable for a while. turn() is also not infallible. The game will predict how much damage you will do, if an enemy is out of range, if your attack will be blocked by terrain etc. This prediction is not always how it turns out though, and it encourages you to learn how your abilities and your opponents behave. It's actually kind of astounding how good a job Supergiant has done of making sure that spamming turn() every time it is available isn't always the optimal course of action, but still a very deep and strategic system.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Va0o7yizEx1Xl_B0qxat6bSMCed1rwWtUGH_vviWyrsPIwUhEe0jaB_zXWVrNbqCrUArTsybDSU-nV3APRTaTG5ezPBCjpE4axi4yFRAcbjewdeG5EXPxuSafQFr6o9GhYFOCM-PqM4/s1600/transistor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Va0o7yizEx1Xl_B0qxat6bSMCed1rwWtUGH_vviWyrsPIwUhEe0jaB_zXWVrNbqCrUArTsybDSU-nV3APRTaTG5ezPBCjpE4axi4yFRAcbjewdeG5EXPxuSafQFr6o9GhYFOCM-PqM4/s1600/transistor.jpg" height="334" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">Unfortunately, once we move beyond the realm of combat, things start to look a little bit less sunshine and lollipops for Transistor. I think the word I would use for it is "whimsical", though I saw someone describe it as "impenetrable", and I think that works well too. The problem Transistor has is that it makes no significant effort to explain itself to you. Certainly there is something to be said for leaving things up to the player's imagination. Supergiant chose this option at every possible juncture though, and you are left with a game that feels pretentious at best. The player is just dropped into this deserted city and has no recourse but to make their way from point to point. Nothing is explained explicitly or otherwise. None of the characters or locales are properly introduced or fleshed out, and you aren't given any good indication of what their motivations are. Everything just kind of exists. The Transistor itself talks constantly, much like Basion's narrator, and yet it feels like he never says anything worth hearing. There are tons of little interactive bits in the area, and yet they don't flesh out the world so much as say "hey, there's this thing here, isn't that cool?".</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">On one hand the player is left to interpret things as they wish. On the other hand, I personally end up just feeling really confused by this empty void of a world and what seems like multitudinous plot holes. By the end of the game I had just kind of accepted that I wasn't going to get a cast of characters or a world I cared about. I accepted that nothing was going to make sense, nothing was going to be explained, and that I should just put my head down and enjoy the combat. Perhaps the game's narrative just isn't for me and someone else will be able to understand it just fine. I can certainly see it being something that some people do enjoy, but it most assuredly left a sour taste in my mouth. However that being said, I still enjoyed the game quite a bit purely on the strength of it's combat. Luckily the minimalist approach the game takes to everything else means that it's pretty easy to pretend fighting the process is all that Transistor is about.</span>Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-18123579621440309572014-05-15T16:35:00.001-04:002014-05-15T16:35:44.783-04:00Thomas Was Alone and Narrative in Gameplay<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrlxvRCk1j_o0o9_2-oECRbyQbQIfoAbCrSti8Uso9SjIiq65Xnoi3YL4E8Uzjnk-VY84G5fBOHB8DRYS6_LE6ZrLNwPm-L0wcdKTk8SThfM4LDR_iv3Xw7kaBSynnnoGsq_YVYzZXOg4/s1600/Thomas+Was+Alone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrlxvRCk1j_o0o9_2-oECRbyQbQIfoAbCrSti8Uso9SjIiq65Xnoi3YL4E8Uzjnk-VY84G5fBOHB8DRYS6_LE6ZrLNwPm-L0wcdKTk8SThfM4LDR_iv3Xw7kaBSynnnoGsq_YVYzZXOg4/s1600/Thomas+Was+Alone.jpg" height="368" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">We live in a very interesting age for video games. 20 years ago the market was still growing; AAAs weren't quite so monolithic and the the market didn't have the accessibility or the infrastructure for indies to thrive. Yet in a world where game budgets are getting <a href="http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/6/5686268/Destiny-costs-activision-500-million-to-develop-promote" target="_blank">outrageously out of hand</a>, the indie market is flourishing. In a world where Activision and Ubisoft and Gamefreak are pushing yearly releases of big franchises, we have a plethora of indie games. Games which can be successful thanks to digital distribution, word of mouth. Games which, without hundreds of millions of dollars riding on them, can get away with taking creative risks. It is in this world that a game like Thomas Was Alone, a game about colored rectangles, can sell <a href="http://www.polygon.com/2014/4/25/5654216/thomas-was-alone-sales-1-million-copies" target="_blank">over a million copies</a>. Myself being among them, I thought I would talk about what makes such a simple game so great.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">So aside from rectangles, what exactly is Thomas Was Alone about? Well the idea is to reduce a puzzle platformer to it's most basic elements. Image a game like Trine or The Lost Vikings, wherein you control a group of characters one at a time. Each character has a personality and a backstory and a set of abilities, and you must combine these abilities in order to get the entire crew to the end of a level. All of these things are also true of Thomas Was Alone, except instead of Eric the Red and Baelog the Brave, you have Thomas the red rectangle and Claire the blue square. While they don't have fancy graphics or flashy abilities, I would argue that the characters in Thomas Was Alone are much better defined than most games without ever saying a word, and the game's narrative is shaped significantly better than most, too.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGkLX1Visuw9usGuQYp_g1C8QQZ_HKol-t3ITfV-VxuXtaz4ZdJApzcSzoazjzwGTZTh5oz2d0G9hYjYnIi1VfDTV877mplrPM0e4Nrx7XR7LJpJFOA7Om5Dlu15pAy-ujpkp76XHJekQ/s1600/thomas_top.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGkLX1Visuw9usGuQYp_g1C8QQZ_HKol-t3ITfV-VxuXtaz4ZdJApzcSzoazjzwGTZTh5oz2d0G9hYjYnIi1VfDTV877mplrPM0e4Nrx7XR7LJpJFOA7Om5Dlu15pAy-ujpkp76XHJekQ/s1600/thomas_top.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">When you first start the game, Thomas is quite literally alone. You are given several levels to get the hang of what Thomas can do by letting the play figure it out (as is the case with every new character you are introduced to). While you are learning, the fantastic British narrator introduces you to the story of Thomas, who is lost, confused and lonely. Over the course of the journey you are introduced to other rectangles, such as Chris the pessimistic orange rectangle and John the narcissistic yellow rectangle. Each level the narrator tells you a little about the characters, sometimes a little about the story, which in truth, is barely there and really kind of irrelevant. The story is about the characters and their journey more so than the game's actual plot. Sure there are puzzles. They are well made, they are well paced, they make you think without being too hard, everything a puzzle game should be really. Yet to me, what really sets Thomas Was Alone apart is the unspoken narrative.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">I think Chris really tells the tale of Thomas Was Alone. When you meet him, he is down, antisocial, and not much use to be frank. He's small, he can't jump very well, and he constantly needs the other characters' help to get around. But sometimes there's a spot that only Chris can reach, you need his help to progress. The same is true of every character. Some characters are more capable on their own, but at some point they all need help, and no matter how pathetic a character may be solo, there always comes a time when you need their help. Nobody can make it on their own, and when they work together not only can you make it to the next level, but your little rectangles grow as people(polygons?), too. Their personalities perfectly match their abilities, and each character has real and measurable character growth. I often found myself identifying with the little shapes, sharing in their woes, and celebrating their accomplishments. It's truly astounding how such a minimalist game can send such a powerful message, and it's all because the narrative and the gameplay are as one. Sure, the narrator is great and lines are well written, but the strongest messages are the ones that are inferred rather than stated.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1F0mtpOD9s44rdXzQG5hw-7goIY8jbVIyVZazYafuKWQeLt0wufQB40N4mguwkITkmYt_rM-RBKZsQBghVOFsDpRstsR3URoEJQ1RypPH5ZdI9p33UKAFPGIa4aSRGbUFFPqB_v2d5uc/s1600/thomas+was+alone.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1F0mtpOD9s44rdXzQG5hw-7goIY8jbVIyVZazYafuKWQeLt0wufQB40N4mguwkITkmYt_rM-RBKZsQBghVOFsDpRstsR3URoEJQ1RypPH5ZdI9p33UKAFPGIa4aSRGbUFFPqB_v2d5uc/s1600/thomas+was+alone.png" height="412" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">Of course, you can have all of these things and have a game that isn't actually much fun. Often this is the case with the most "artsy" games. I don't believe this to be the case with Thomas Was Alone, however. None of what I mentioned is thrown in your face if you aren't looking for it. If you are just looking for a puzzle platformer, Thomas Was Alone does that, too. You don't have any grappling hooks or rocket boots or arcane magics, but figuring out how to use each character's size and abilities does make for quite an interesting game. It's not very hard nor exceptionally long, but it will make you think in a way that no other game will. It's also very good for short sessions, with most levels being easily beaten within 15 minutes. All in all, I would say that if you are looking for a good puzzle platformer, an interesting game, a strong narrative or any combination therein, <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/220780/" target="_blank">Thomas Was Alone</a> is definitely worth your time.</span>Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-16910182876207750032014-02-19T14:04:00.000-05:002014-02-19T14:04:25.030-05:00Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZfAcqh54SOfDpDQNoI5x9iGgbqrZlh9HbFSqPBzNIX5lIzXTHe62bYQy3imNEj1BvbKJR9slYbR2UFxiLt5___9KhngnuhkyJ7DW2XHhjZdoMEIQNTxFpj9cZ5GLMZkpkSPhCOcU2X58/s1600/Final-Fantasy-XIII-Lightning-Returns.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZfAcqh54SOfDpDQNoI5x9iGgbqrZlh9HbFSqPBzNIX5lIzXTHe62bYQy3imNEj1BvbKJR9slYbR2UFxiLt5___9KhngnuhkyJ7DW2XHhjZdoMEIQNTxFpj9cZ5GLMZkpkSPhCOcU2X58/s1600/Final-Fantasy-XIII-Lightning-Returns.jpg" height="400" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">It's no secret that the Final Fantasy franchise has been a bit of a mess for quite a while now. Final Fantasy XIII was pretty heavily panned, and XIII-2 was a very divisive sequel. By now a large portion of the audience is just done with the XIII trilogy; they either hate that Lightning Returns exists, or just can't find it in them to care any more. Personally, I rather like Final Fantasy XIII and always hoped that sequels would be able to live up to the potential that I saw. However this time around, Lightning Returns is a very different game from it's predecessors. In this final installment Lightning is going it alone, and she is faced with a fairly open world to explore and interact with. What's more, the game features a 13-day "doomsday clock", which much like Majora's Mask, counts down to the impending... well, doomsday. All these things had me pretty <a href="http://ramblingofagamer.blogspot.ca/2012/09/lightning-returns-final-fantasy-xiii.html" target="_blank">excited</a> for the possibility of Final Fantasy returning to greatness. Having now played the game for 70 hours and completing everything it has to offer, let's break it down.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">I think that the doomsday clock is the most apparent feature to this game, as it features pretty heavily in both the gameplay and the narrative. The fact that the events of Lightning Returns occur over 13 days is both a blessing and a curse. When the game first starts, I really enjoyed the sense of urgency the doomsday clock gives. It feels like every decision matters, and so does your performance. You don't have the time to grind (in fact, you don't even level up in any way from battles), you just have to manage the resources you have. The problem is that this model falls apart more and more as time goes on. The problem is, you have 13 whole day. We aren't talking some short cycle that you <i>have</i> to do repeatedly like Majora's Mask (or Ephemeral Fantasia for all 2 of you who know what that is), and unlike the aforementioned games, quest progress is the only thing that does not persist if you have to start the clock over. It's quite possible that you will finish all of your main quests by day 5 and have 8 whole days to just chill, which completely removes all urgency from the game. Or maybe you don't manage to complete the main quests and you fail to save the world. You get to keep your stats and gear, but now you have to start over from day 1 and re-do all of the quests. Obviously neither of these scenarios are very good.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Thankfully, exploring the world itself is pretty interesting. There are lots of places to go, lots of things to do, and the environments are fairly captivating. Each of the games 4 areas also offers slightly different kinds of quests. For example, Luxerian has Lightning playing detective a lot of the time, whereas the Wildlands involves a lot of monster hunting and plant gathering. I legitimately enjoyed running around completing random quests, and just seeing what the world had to offer... Most of the time anyways. The issue here comes back to the fact that, once the game's main quests are done, things really slow down. Side quests give you much less direction, or else just require grinding for monster bits. Sometimes the result of this is that you end up just wandering around an area without really knowing where to look, hoping to find something you need or perhaps a new quest. Wandering around with a clear objective is one thing, but it feels pretty atrocious to be wandering around desperately looking for something to do or waiting for a certain time of day. Unfortunately the longer into the 13 day cycle you go, the less new quests start appearing, and the more your wandering becomes aimless.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Aside from the doomsday open world madness, the other thing Lightning Returns does to change things up is having Lightning go it alone. In place of having 2 allies, she instead has the ability to rapidly switch between a set of 3 customizable "schemata", each wielding it's own equipment and abilities. The level of customization you have is actually quite fun to play with, but in reality I didn't find myself changing my setup too much over the course of the game, save for direct upgrades. As nice as the customization is, I still feel like Lightning being alone really messes with the dichotomy of battle. Aside from the schemata system and a fancy new UI, Lightning Returns' battle system actually hasn't changed that much from the last 2 games. Except now Lightning has to worry about doing everything on her own while also being the sole focus of every enemy. Being so restricted can be very frustrating at times, although it does also add weight to your decisions, which is nice. While I think I prefer having a party, there are definitely strengths to Lightning Returns' combat as well. Primary among those is the fact that it feels more skillful. There are a lot of special cases that exist now that reward you for good timing or attacking an enemy in the right place. Combine these with rapidly switching between schemata to use the right ability in the right situation, and it can feel really awesome when you tear an enemy apart. It can feel kind of gross if you don't have the right ability setup for a fight or you are waiting on the ATB for schemata #3 to refill, but I think the annoyances and the badass moments more or less cancel each other out.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8Z_zcGP9Hdq0XovA-2G3D8Htc_iUokR5SdDbLTOQWscGO3_eR2qbkLPJsdP_LEF1oSVKH3DvbNw6_1HRCw8h8ntHQm9PJU4pw-gvs9fY8_dxs81MqzxB28YJQtaZ14xMRJj6P2Y5_tds/s1600/Lightning_Returns_Final-Fantasy-13_34.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8Z_zcGP9Hdq0XovA-2G3D8Htc_iUokR5SdDbLTOQWscGO3_eR2qbkLPJsdP_LEF1oSVKH3DvbNw6_1HRCw8h8ntHQm9PJU4pw-gvs9fY8_dxs81MqzxB28YJQtaZ14xMRJj6P2Y5_tds/s1600/Lightning_Returns_Final-Fantasy-13_34.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">And with all that said, I think all that's left to speak on is the story. Normally I try not to talk much about a game's story, but this time I thought I would make an exception. Final Fantasy has been known to have pretty ridiculous plots in the past, but the previous two XIII games were considered by many to be particularly bad. The plots were just weird, the characters were weak, and XIII-2 in particular had an ending that I personally consider to be a slap in the face to the player. Lightning Returns was supposed to be a proper ending to the trilogy, and I suppose it is. Kind of? If you are paying attention, it does give some closure to the absurdity that is XIII-2. The fact of the matter is Lightning Returns turns the weird up to 11, and despite being predictable, just kind of stops trying to explain what's going on. The game's plot felt kind of superfluous to me, really. What I did find interesting was the world though. Every person living in Nova Chrystallis has lived for 500+ years without aging at this point. That creates some pretty interesting scenarios, which I think the game did a pretty good job of exploring. Lightning is still a flat and uninteresting vessel, and the game is definitely too expository for my taste, but I still found the world interesting. I couldn't tell you what happened in the ending cinematic, though.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Lightning Returns is just a really weird game, honestly. It has a lot of really strong points, it has a lot of really weak points. There were points where I was really enjoying myself, and there were points where I just wanted it to be over. It's not the game I was hoping it would be; I think it would have been a lot better if the doomsday cycle was a lot shorter or didn't exist at all. The combat was different, and interesting in it's own way, despite creating some new annoyances. The world was really well built, and even though the plot is absolutely ridiculous, what JRPG isn't? It's definitely not a game that everyone will enjoy and it's a bit of a mess, but in the end of the day I still enjoyed my time with Lightning Returns.</span><br />
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<br />Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-66845822300022013262014-01-30T19:08:00.000-05:002014-01-30T19:08:11.697-05:00Enslaved: Odyssey to the West<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB7nLpzMJylsmQoOiolMzwDTnGZNoROHgK_PII947zXyMcG7AfDDGh3x3Bz2v7D1TlX6m8Rok3vCba-nbtSWgF_sjM7kg89TsnJwAhVUjGZo7kWvRnJkYdZu4SDoCRd6G629spUw5MTc0/s1600/banner01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB7nLpzMJylsmQoOiolMzwDTnGZNoROHgK_PII947zXyMcG7AfDDGh3x3Bz2v7D1TlX6m8Rok3vCba-nbtSWgF_sjM7kg89TsnJwAhVUjGZo7kWvRnJkYdZu4SDoCRd6G629spUw5MTc0/s1600/banner01.jpg" height="246" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">This one is a long time coming. Enslaved is just one of those games that everyone who's played it says is good, and yet very few people end up playing it. It just has this quality that says "you don't have to play me right now, go ahead, wait until I'm cheaper". At least, this was the case for me until I finally picked it up for a measly $5 on PSN. Having now played the game to completion, I thought I would talk a bit about it, if for no other reason than to try and get straight my own opinion of it. You see, Enslaved is a really weird case to me... Allow me to explain.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Enslaved starts out really strong. From the get go you are thrown into the action with no expository introductions. The game opens with a tutorial section that is perhaps a little over done, but considering you are at the time escaping from a crashing airship, I feel as though the action excuses the tutorial a bit. Beyond the first chapter, the game does a good job of never really taking you out of the action too long. The game's story doesn't try to be over complicated, and is told largely through or in parallel to gameplay. What's more, the characters are all quite genuine, and listening to them talk is never annoying or disinteresting. In particular, Andy Serkis does a stellar job as the main character Monkey.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Monkey isn't really your average protagonist. He's a big brute, he's very angry, and everything from his voice acting to his fighting style to the dramatic kill cam the occasionally pops up really hammers home this point. He has pretty good reason to be, to. Early on in the game a girl named Trip fits a slave headband on Monkey, tying his life to hers and forcing him to do her bidding. She is terrified of Monkey, but she also realizes that he is her only hope to get home. What I found really interesting about this though, is that it very quickly becomes unclear who is the real master here. Monkey may have to do what Trip commands, but at the same time Monkey has no qualms telling Trip what to do. In fact, giving Trip orders is a somewhat big part of the gameplay. It's not even annoying, like most escorting tends to be. Seeing how the two characters interact in such a strange, stressful situation is pretty cool, even if where it all leads is fairly predictable.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Unfortunately, that's kind of the story of <i>Enslaved</i> I feel. On the surface everything looks and feels pretty stellar. The game actually reminds me a lot of <i>Uncharted</i>, which is pretty high praise. The graphics are superb and colorful, the gameplay does a good job of mixing combat, climbing and puzzles. Even the way Monkey runs around feels similar to controlling Drake. Everything is really well polished and the presentation is excellent. And yet... The game feels lacking somehow. Like they were trying to paint this beautiful picture, and they did, except instead of painting it on canvas they were painting on printer paper. Sure what's there is a work of art, but what's underneath isn't so great, and it drags down the quality as a whole.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjozBmy3siDMqT64FYYCs6IAdoJ5hvYkeFdIoV1n6IIOrcR-3lwYOOVbK4Bf9kXZV18nvqUJvYHVn_pKeXt-pxMdXwwdmDl5-PkmcQ__CG_SmWFwOBPd-fgUB2ik_8CQGdnQFy9_4umCYc/s1600/enslaved7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjozBmy3siDMqT64FYYCs6IAdoJ5hvYkeFdIoV1n6IIOrcR-3lwYOOVbK4Bf9kXZV18nvqUJvYHVn_pKeXt-pxMdXwwdmDl5-PkmcQ__CG_SmWFwOBPd-fgUB2ik_8CQGdnQFy9_4umCYc/s1600/enslaved7.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">None of the issues behind Enslaved are massive, thankfully. Most of it comes down to minor annoyances. The camera is wonky here, jumping from this pipe to that pipe is weirdly picky, there are a few too many platforming sections, the few puzzles in the game, are tedious and not very rewarding, the game feels like it wasn't designed with regenerating health in mind (granted, it's an optional upgrade) etc. Probably the biggest complaint is the combat. There isn't as much of it as you might think, but what's there is pretty simplistic. You just kind of beat on things until they die, and it's way too easy up until about 2/3 of the way through the game. At that point you have to start using your abilities a little more wisely, but combat transitions straight from mindless to irritating. Enemies can decide they want to be blocking or start attacking you at seemingly any time and there isn't really anything you can do about it. Combat just felt tedious, and considering how well Monkey's rage is conveyed, you would think smashing mechs would be more fun. There are a couple hours in the middle where the game really drags, too.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">I suppose what I'm trying to say here is that, Enslaved is definitely an impressive game, I enjoyed playing it. It's a much better experience than a game, though. It's really weird to me, to see a game with so much polish have so many little design issues. One would think that part of polishing the game would be also tweaking the design, but the issues are there none the less. Most of them are pretty easily overlooked, but they come up often enough that it feels like there's always something to be annoyed at. It's pretty common to see a game with lots of potential end up being mediocre, but Enslaved is perhaps the first game I've seen that is mediocre at it's core, but polished so heavily that it ended up being pretty darn good. If you are more willing to overlook gameplay flaws (and I'm almost positive that you are) Enslaved is definitely worth checking out.</span><br />
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<br />Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-17503776517980027942014-01-13T20:20:00.001-05:002014-01-13T20:20:51.123-05:00Awesome Games Done Quick 2014<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS38I326NgGfDZvzosDfMbWqgL2fVDwsVe8NJzXfHqQE3Qk3YjT91TzgyDeSKFzdW7n6v5pkLB2vyaBSOnqTNUYfguGy4yhO67ASASez7ogbbURuXXlgtEwmvmGON8a-mW-IZXg5n8kwc/s1600/AGDQ-2014-feature-672x372.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS38I326NgGfDZvzosDfMbWqgL2fVDwsVe8NJzXfHqQE3Qk3YjT91TzgyDeSKFzdW7n6v5pkLB2vyaBSOnqTNUYfguGy4yhO67ASASez7ogbbURuXXlgtEwmvmGON8a-mW-IZXg5n8kwc/s1600/AGDQ-2014-feature-672x372.jpg" height="354" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">As I type this, Awesome Games Done Quick 2014 is just wrapping up. What is Awesome Games Done Quick you ask? Well it's a week-long speedrunning marathon for charity. Games Done Quick events have been been going on for a few years now, and they have been growing pretty rapidly each time. Three years ago a handful of guys in a basement raised $10 000. This time around a crew of 500+ people rented out a hotel for a week and raised $1 000 000 for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. The scale of these events are amazing, they are practically a mini-convention at this point, and obviously $1 000 000 for charity is incredible.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">So perhaps you are also wondering what exactly speedrunning is. It's pretty self explanatory, but it essentially entails playing a video game from start to finish as quickly as possible. It sounds simple, but in practice it means extremely skilled players with a lot of knowledge about their chosen game, and a plethora of tricks and glitches that make the game do things you never thought it could do. It's really entertaining to see such high level play, and the way some of the glitches work is fascinating, especially if you are familiar with how games are made or know something about programming.
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<span style="color: white;">I make this post for two reasons, but essentially it's just because Games Done Quick events are amazing. Generating so many donations for charity is hugely worthwhile, and it's super entertaining to see such a wide variety of games get ripped apart. Marathons tend to be especially entertaining, because the focus is a little more on showmanship and commentary. So keep an eye out for more of them in the future, Summer Games Done Quick should be happening in about 5-6 months, and there are several smaller events popping up all the time. Keep an eye on <a href="http://gamesdonequick.com/" target="new">gamesdonequick.com</a> and <a href="http://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/" target="new">forum.speeddemosarchive.com</a>.
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<span style="color: white;">So if you aren't convinced that Games Done Quick is worth watching, watch these clips. In fact watch them anyways, because they are freaking amazing. And all 3 of them happened within about 6 hours.
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<span style="color: white;"><a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/494222408?t=54m40s" target="new">Super Punch-Out Blindfolded</a>
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<span style="color: white;"><a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/494222408?t=7h51m20s" target="new">Super Metroid 4-man race</a>
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<span style="color: white;"><a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/494222408?t=10h20m52s" target="new">Goldeneye co-op</a>
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<span style="color: white;">If I've piqued your interest, you can find a list of links to every run in the marayhon <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/1ui4dn/agdq_vods_thread/" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/1ui4dn/agdq_vods_thread/cek0mmc" target="_blank">here </a>and <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/1ui4dn/agdq_vods_thread/celhqnr" target="_blank">here</a>. I haven't seen every run, but here are some highlights beyond the top 3 above, in chronological order:
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<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/492923053?t=2m50s" target="_blank"><span style="color: cyan;">Jak and Daxter any% by Bonesaw577</span></a><br />
<span style="color: white;">I don't really know the game, but it's a good run and Bonesaw is an entertaining guy. Good way to start the marathon.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/492923053?t=4h2m20s" target="_blank"><span style="color: cyan;">Viewtiful Joe any% by tminator64</span></a><br />
<span style="color: white;">If you know the game, you can probably imagine how entertaining it is played super well and super fast. Unfortunately not many people run it, but it's a really great watch and tminator64 is a charismatic fellow.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;"><a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/492923053?t=10h10m35s" target="_blank">Mario 64 0-Stars</a> and<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/492923053?t=10h20m20s" target="_blank"> Super Mario World</a> by TASBot</span><br />
<span style="color: white;">Both very short, but demonstrates what's called a Tool Assisted Speedrun. As the name implies, it uses emulators to record a set of inputs which will play the game more perfectly than is possible for a human being. It's pretty impressive, and what they were able to do with Super Mario World is especially impressive.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/492923053?t=26h39m" target="_blank"><span style="color: cyan;">Yoshi's Island 100% by Tri-hex</span></a><br />
<span style="color: white;">This is a fairly long run, but Yoshi's Island is one of the most technically impressive speedruns I have ever seen, and Tri-hex is a great showman with a very fast and chaotic play style. It's worth seeing at least some of it.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/493407760?t=2h52m" target="_blank"><span style="color: cyan;">Mega Man X 100% race by Caleb Hart and Zewing</span></a><br />
<span style="color: white;">This race can't not be bad. These 2 are the top 2 in the world in a very optimized run of a really good game. Just to make things more interesting, they even have a slightly different route through the game.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/493711459?t=8h24m40s" target="_blank"><span style="color: cyan;">Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Richter all bosses race by Mecha Richter and Zex</span></a><br />
<span style="color: white;">This race was great. SotN is a great game, Richter is really hard and requires an insane amount of skill and practice to play this well, and it was a very close race, too.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/493711459?t=9h0m25s" target="_blank"><span style="color: cyan;">Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Alucard any%</span></a><br />
<span style="color: white;">This is here mostly just because I love this game and I love this run. romscout is insanely good at it, and this run ended up being really really good.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/493711459?t=11h16m35s" target="_blank"><span style="color: cyan;">F-Zero GX Very Hard mode by CGN</span></a><br />
<span style="color: white;">This game is really hard, and this guy is really good. To add to the hype they upped the difficulty a bit more by donating to add a couple challenges, and it's just pretty exciting all around. Lots of people consider this one of their favorite runs of the marathon.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/494105659?t=1h53m46s" target="_blank"><span style="color: cyan;">Borderlands any% co-op by ProfessorBroman, Teawrex, UberGoose and iMysty</span></a><br />
<span style="color: white;">Longish run, but very entertaining I think. Lots of pretty crazy glitches, a couple developers on Skype, the 4 guys have a good repor etc. It's kind of hard to appreciate how crazy it is, but it's a fun time. I find it really interesting how well planned out the run is, considering that it has to be optimized for all 4 players, who often go off and do 4 completely different things.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/494222408?t=8m50s" target="_blank"><span style="color: cyan;">Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! Blindfolded by Sinister1</span></a><br />
<span style="color: white;">Enough said, really. Playing any game blindfolded is clearly very impressive. This one was a really strong contender for top-3, but there were so many other amazing runs that it barely got edged out.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/494222408?t=54m40s" target="_blank"><span style="color: cyan;">Super Punch-Out Blindfolded by Zallard1</span></a><br />
<span style="color: white;">Obviously similar to Punch-Out, but the whole thing was just a little bit more hype. The game itself has a bit more punch to it, the runner is a bit more animated, it was a little more touch and go, and Mike Tyson isn't around to ruin all the fun. Easily one of the most fun runs I've ever seen.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/494222408?t=2h03m57s" target="_blank"><span style="color: cyan;">The Legend of Zelda: Major's Mask any% by ZFG</span></a><br />
<span style="color: white;">Majora's Mask is a pretty cool run, and this one went pretty well. I will say however that MM has this problem where you have a ton of setup and not enough payoff - there are long periods of the run where not a lot happens.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/494222408?t=3h56m40s" target="_blank"><span style="color: cyan;">The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time all dungeons race by ZFG and Moltov</span></a><br />
<span style="color: white;">This race was really really good. It was quite close, and it does a really good job of demonstrating the absurd level to which tricks and glitches open up this game. I recommend this one pretty strongly, though it might be hard to follow both guys if you don't already know a bit about OoT speedruns.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/494222408?t=6h01m25s" target="_blank"><span style="color: cyan;">Metroid Prime any% by Miles</span></a><br />
<span style="color: white;">Metroid Prime runs are always pretty popular, they've been around for a long time and are just pretty cool on the whole. I'm not a big fan of the runner, but they also had one of the game's developers on Skype which was pretty awesome.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/494222408?t=7h51m20s" target="_blank"><span style="color: cyan;">Super Metroid any% 4-man race by Garrison, Krauser, Zoast and Ivan</span></a><br />
<span style="color: white;">This is easily one of the top 3 runs of the marathon. Super Metroid is a great speedrun to begin with. Add in a stupid close 4-man race and a couple hundred people in the room, some of the best commentary of the marathon, and the hype is insane. Seriously, if you didn't watch it, go do it.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/494222408?t=8h57m15s" target="_blank"><span style="color: cyan;">Metroid Zero Mission hard mode low% by Dragondarch</span></a><br />
<span style="color: white;">This run is interesting in a bit different way, being low%. In other words Dragondarch purposefully avoids as many upgrades as possible while also playing on hard mode. This category is more for insane challenge than a fast run, but he pulls it off. A really tense hour+ of really skilled play.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/494222408?t=10h20m52s" target="_blank"><span style="color: cyan;">Goldeneye 007 Agent Mode co-op by BassBoost and RWhiteGoose</span></a><br />
<span style="color: white;">This run is nuts. First off - these two are both playing the game. Essentially one guy moves and the other shoots. Goldeneye speedrunning is insanely optimized and pretty intense to begin with, and it happens that their time still manages to be really really good. Also Goose is the living embodiment of hype. I suppose it also helps that 7/8 of the games before this one were all really awesome (hint - the last 7 games on this list).</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/494361211?t=12h23m40s" target="_blank"><span style="color: cyan;">Super Mario 64 one-handed by PEACHES_</span></a><br />
<span style="color: white;">Mario 64 is a really impressive run just in general. Peaches isn't as amazing as some other players, and obviously playing one-handed is going to reduce the quality of his play. But like, he's playing one-handed. That's fricking insane.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/494518288?t=5h11m25s" target="_blank"><span style="color: cyan;">Chrono Trigger 100% by obdajr</span></a><br />
<span style="color: white;">I'm going to be totally honest- don't watch this whole run. It's almost 6 hours long and it's a turn based RPG, so it's kind of hard to really appreciate a lot of the little things going on. Outside of nostalgia it's not the best watch. However this was the last game of the marathon. The last 40-60 minutes or so were pretty cool just in terms of gameplay. Combine that with the fact that there was a mad dash at the end to see if donations could actually hit the 1 million before the end of the run. Both things combined make for a pretty insane end to the marathon, all set to World Revolution. You can watch from about <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/b/494518288?t=10h24m52s" target="_blank">here </a>if you want to see what I mean.</span><br />
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Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-77951086485246570782014-01-01T13:21:00.000-05:002014-01-01T13:21:45.343-05:00Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Combat Analysis<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: white;">Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is a game that was well received critically, but received a somewhat more mixed reception from gamers. This isn't that surprising, considering the game did a lot of things that were bound to upset fans of the series, including retconning the story, being 3D, being level based, etc. That said, the game was still excellent in a lot of ways. The game's environments were all very well crafted, and showed a lot of imagination. The soundtrack was quite epic, but never got in the way. The story was a pretty interesting re-imagining of the origins of Dracula and the Belmont clan. It's a game with a lot of meat to it, and unsurprisingly, a lot of evil creatures to kill. That's where this post comes in. Today I will be taking a look at what the game's combat did right, and where it could be improved.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">So to kick things off, what exactly is the combat like? Well on the surface it looks and feels a lot like God of War. Gabriel Belmont uses his trusty Combat Cross to whip at things from a distance, make combos, send enemies skyward, grab enemies for dramatic finishers, etc. On it's own it's a decent imitation of God of War, but things start getting interesting as you progress in the game and obtain the light and shadow magic. These powers each come with their own magic bar, and can be toggled on at any time to add special effects to your normal attacks, and enable the use of some special abilities. Light magic causes your attacks to heal you, while shadow magic does extra damage to your enemies. These attacks drain your magic, and the main way to restore it is using the game's focus system. As you attack enemies focus is gained, with bigger combos generating it faster. Inactivity will slowly drain focus, while getting hit will reset it entirely. While in a fully focused state, any time an enemy is attacked they will generate magic orbs which can later be absorbed to fill your magic.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">This system creates a really interesting dance between keeping yourself alive, keeping your magic reserves high, and actually using your magic. A lot of thought can be put into how best to manage the resources available to you to best make it through a fight. Should you use shadow magic to finish the fight quickly? What if you get hit, then you need to heal yourself and you won't have any focus to refill that magic. When do you build your focus? You can't do that and heal at the same time. When do you switch your magic back on when your focus fills? Do you just fill up your magic, or do you generate extra magic orbs in case you need them later? The issue here is that as interesting as this system is in theory, it has some problems in practice. For one, it just doesn't really fit well with the way the game's combat actually works, and for another it rewards perfect play too well while over-punishing imperfect play. Allow me to explain:</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">The issues with Castlevania's combat can basically all be boiled down to, <i>it's too easy to get hit</i>. Enemies in Lords of Shadow tend to either appear in large numbers, or have very unpredictable / poorly telegraphed attacks, or some combination therein. Most fights consist of enemies dashing and slashing all over the place, and it gets very hard to react to everything going on. When a particularly nasty attack is incoming they are always telegraphed, but the window to react to it without getting hit is small. In fact the reaction window feels very similar in length to how long you are locked into an animation while attacking or rolling. It seems to me that the intention was that the player should block a lot of these attacks, but this is made needlessly hard by the game's controls. For some reason it was decided that the block button should be the same as the roll button. Holding the button blocks, pressing the button while holding the L-stick causes you to roll in that direction. The issue is that in combat you are constantly using the L-stick to move Gabriel, to direct where he should be attacking, whatever. So attempted blocks frequently instead cause you to roll into the attack you are trying to block. I honestly believe that if rolling had been assigned to the R-stick instead (which is not used for anything ever) a lot of the combat's issues would have been alleviated.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">But back to the issue at hand, getting hit is especially bad in Lords of Shadow. Sure, you lose some life, but the implications are much more than that. You basically have three resources in combat: health, focus, and magic. As I described earlier, you use focus to generate magic and you use magic to heal health. The issue is that <i>getting hit drains all three resources simultaneously</i>. Damage reduces health and resets your focus, while also necessitating that you expend magic to heal. In other words, even the smallest of hits can mess up your rhythm entirely. It's incredibly frustrating to constantly be low on magic because the odd stupid attack hits you. On the flip side of things, if you do manage to fill your focus you are typically given an absolutely absurd amount of magic orbs in a short period of time - quite possibly more than you know what to do with. In other words the punishment for being hit is too big, and so is the reward for not being hit. 100% of the rewards are at the top of the scale, and anything but perfect play results in starvation.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">With all that said however, I will say that there are merits to both extremes of this system. Low magic situations tend to feel very intense and scrappy - you are literally fighting for your life. If you can't keep your combo going, you won't be able to keep healing yourself. On the flip side, when you fill your focus the reward is pretty big and you feel unbeatable. However that said, I personally would have still preferred if the system had a bit more even of a gradient. For example, perhaps every attack should have a small chance to generate orbs once your focus is greater than 50%, with the chance and volume of orbs increasing as your focus approaches 100%. You still have low magic situations, but you at least get something if you're playing decently. You don't feel like you have to play perfectly to survive, but if you are playing really well the reward is still big. That's my thought anyways. It's fun trying to manage your resources, but you can't exactly manage resources if the game is starving you.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">In the end of the day, I think Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is still a very competent title. If it's combat was a little better, the game probably could have been great, though. It will be very interesting to see what changes Lords of Shadow 2 makes when the game comes out in the end of February. If the demo is any indication it seems like the focus system has been forsaken entirely in favor of automatically regenerating magic. I wait with bated breath.</span><br />
<br />Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-4095775466630955342013-12-18T15:50:00.000-05:002013-12-18T15:50:55.044-05:00Assassin's Creed: Revelations Thoughts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: white;">Another year, another Assassin's Creed game. Except somehow it seems that I'm perpetually 2 years behind the curve here. Last year I played <a href="http://ramblingofagamer.blogspot.ca/2013/01/assassins-creed-brotherhood-and-player.html" target="_blank">Brotherhood</a>, and now a year later I've finally gotten around to playing Revelations. I guess the thing is, I have something of a love/hate relationship with Assassin's Creed. I love climbing about historical settings hitting up all the little icons on my map. However Assassin's Creed games always seem to know just how to frustrate the bejesus out of me. It seems to be the trend that, by the time I'm done with one game I'm frustrated enough that I wait a whole year to play the next one. And of course by that point, the latest title will have come out, thus perpetuating the 2 game backlog. At any rate, I knew going into Revelations that it had not been quite as well received as it's brethren. Now that I have completed the game, here are my own thoughts on the matter.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">At first, I was actually pretty pleased with Revelations. One of my biggest complaints with Brotherhood was how restrictive it was. It felt like invisible walls were erected at seemingly random places all over the world. On the other hand, Revelations gives you unfettered access to pretty much the entire map and it's activities within the first hour or so of gameplay. However after playing the game, I feel like Revelations actually went too far the other way, at least for my taste. Personally I feel that the answer is somewhere in the middle. The player should have access to side missions, but they should also be encouraged to progress the story. Rather than throwing all the side content at you at once, I would prefer it be broken up a little bit. In this way it feels like your "reward" for completing all the side quests is moving on with the story, and unlocking the next area of the map. With that said, I actually feel like Brotherhood got the free roaming more right than Revelations, despite my issues with it. I just wish that divisions on the map had been more logical and better communicated.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">As far as Revelations' gameplay goes, it is, unsurprisingly, pretty much identical to Brotherhood. At least on the surface. The two big additions are the hook blade and bombs. The hook blade creates some mildly interesting additions to how climbing works, but much of it seems cosmetic. The biggest difference comes in the form of being able to ride ziplines. Ziplines are certainly cool, but they really don't come up very often. Outside story missions, I only used them once or twice. As far as bombs, they seem like a fairly interesting addition, but I honestly just couldn't be bothered. The issue is that the bomb system was just too complicated to be worth it to me. It comes with an entire crafting system, three different categories of bombs, and customized bombs composed of three different parts. It's not wildly complex, I just never felt compelled to play with the system. I would use the odd bomb, but most of the time I felt that I would just rather stick with the mechanics that I had been using for the last 2-3 games.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">This issue with the bombs is really indicative of a larger issue with the game on the whole, too. One thing I rather liked about Brotherhood was the way it encouraged you to use a wider array of tools to get the job done. Synchronization goals would have you experiment with different tools, and after exposing you to them the game would later give you situations where said tool would be ideal to use. In contrast, Revelations felt like I could just brute force my way through everything. I don't think I used poison more than once, and I'm pretty sure I never used the smoke bomb, both of which were staples in Brotherhood. I never really saw the need. It felt like I could play through the entire game using nothing but the wrist blade and throwing knives. On top of this, I never hired a single group of Thieves, Mercenaries or Romani. They were there, but they didn't really seem to serve a real purpose. It's like all these things are still in the game just because it doesn't make sense to remove functionality, but they didn't take the time to create situations where they would actually be useful.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">This is kind of indicative of my feeling on the game as a whole. It feels like it was rushed. It feels like the shell of a game, like Ubisoft just took the engine from Brotherhood, modeled a new town, and shipped it. It's a good example of how important level design is. Good mechanics are great, but without a world that provides you with the proper challenges, they feel superfluous. That's not to say that Constantinople itself is poorly made, because it's a nice city. It just feels like everything about Revelations is lacking the spirit the previous games had. This is not Ezio's swan song so much as a placeholder to finish Altair's story and hold people over until Assassin's Creed III. This chapter of the story could have been skipped altogether and I don't feel like you would miss it. If anything, after the ending of Brotherhood Revelations is pretty anti-climactic. That's not to say Revelations is a bad game, it's just decent.</span><br />
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<br />Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-58982724972776783382013-12-05T15:18:00.001-05:002013-12-05T15:39:48.049-05:004 Reasons A Link Between Worlds is the Best Zelda Yet<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgojuSSuJzH_zHWc8UD3wbL-kCvcggfiEsG0y_ngSicLkxd9SMxrauCHFJ8rx4TvW6Z-3UdDELM-lVAibqj9l9sKyd4cazAPRtizLFZ7aSS2pazBs_Rrp-q61tjRhVcI6v6eZq3ITiSm_g/s1600/zelda-a-link-between-worlds.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgojuSSuJzH_zHWc8UD3wbL-kCvcggfiEsG0y_ngSicLkxd9SMxrauCHFJ8rx4TvW6Z-3UdDELM-lVAibqj9l9sKyd4cazAPRtizLFZ7aSS2pazBs_Rrp-q61tjRhVcI6v6eZq3ITiSm_g/s640/zelda-a-link-between-worlds.png" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">Back when Nintendo was just pushing the 3DS onto an unsuspecting world, there was a lot of talk about where the Zelda franchise was going. Skyward Sword had been in the works for a long time, and now Ocarina of Time was getting a pretty major facelift in the form of Ocarina of Time 3D. So naturally people started to wonder, if Ocarina of Time was getting remade, what was next? Many people have rallied long and hard for <a href="https://www.facebook.com/OperationMoonfall" target="_blank">Majora's Mask</a>, though unfortunately that has not yet come to fruition. However, it didn't take long before Shigeru Miyamoto himself piped up saying he would love to remake <a href="http://ca.ign.com/articles/2011/05/05/miyamoto-not-interested-in-more-3ds-remakes-except-link-to-the-past-maybe" target="_blank">A Link to the Past</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Now I don't know if you know this, but <a href="http://ramblingofagamer.blogspot.ca/2012/12/top-10-zelda-games.html" target="_blank">I love me some Link to the Past</a>, so I was pretty hyped about the possibility of a remake of my favorite Zelda game. Then along comes word that A Link Between Worlds was coming, and was a direct sequel to A Link to the Past. I was instantly interested in the game. I didn't even make the connection at the time, that this was our HD remake. We probably aren't going to get an HD Link to the Past. At first this realization made me kind of sad, but I think it's for the best. A Link Between Worlds is probably a better game than an HD Link to the Past could have been. A Link Between Worlds is probably the best Zelda game to date, in fact. Here are some reasons why:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWpjRo6Ptw5JmuKBg0eINgBNsp53Ge7RJjHFLXQAKJxTyWnG3yieBTcRtSlJOVVje_qiuaMXLhPWPuimGcka9LmtCjPaasi7NOAocVaWRggvFyFP7oVIZJMC6cu-JSGyZgikh44NP8NrE/s1600/a-link-between-worlds-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWpjRo6Ptw5JmuKBg0eINgBNsp53Ge7RJjHFLXQAKJxTyWnG3yieBTcRtSlJOVVje_qiuaMXLhPWPuimGcka9LmtCjPaasi7NOAocVaWRggvFyFP7oVIZJMC6cu-JSGyZgikh44NP8NrE/s400/a-link-between-worlds-3.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<b><span style="color: white;">1) The Controls</span></b></h3>
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<span style="color: white;">It wasn't that long ago that I talked a bit about <a href="http://ramblingofagamer.blogspot.ca/2013/11/character-controls-that-feel-good.html" target="_blank">the importance of good controls</a>. They matter a lot. You can tell a game is going to be fun if you pick it up and just controlling your character feels good even without goals or challenges to overcome. A Link Between Worlds has this feel. From minute one you can tell just how responsive Link is to your slightest nudge on the circle pad. He rockets around Hyrule at what seems like a blistering pace, and yet it never feels like he is out of control. He goes where you want, when you want. It seems simple, but it goes a long way when you can't blame stupid deaths on bad controls.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Of course a lot of this precision comes from the simple fact that the 3DS uses the circle pad to control Link's movement. If you think about it, just about every 2D Zelda game has always used the d-pad for character movement. This of course comes with the inherent disadvantage of only being able to handle 8 different directional inputs. So it's not really a big surprise that given the 360 degree movement of the circle pad, A Link Between Worlds feels like a breath of fresh air. Granted there was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Swords_Adventures" target="_blank">Four Swords Adventures</a> on the GameCube, and it's controls never really felt quite so awe-inspiring. But we won't talk about that.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD6i-VvC15caKB-g3-byCltCUODc1PxSFyqhdTayxidHHtjjafMyXoOUjdqwurUie2-M9MufmDuB403j5GejkZbaYcHi-hfpQMc4rhpa8zHvSIgrtrlzRHWtOVBZGeHp_qw7V6aOU1lxc/s1600/a-link-between-worlds-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD6i-VvC15caKB-g3-byCltCUODc1PxSFyqhdTayxidHHtjjafMyXoOUjdqwurUie2-M9MufmDuB403j5GejkZbaYcHi-hfpQMc4rhpa8zHvSIgrtrlzRHWtOVBZGeHp_qw7V6aOU1lxc/s400/a-link-between-worlds-5.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<b><span style="color: white;">2) The "Magic" Meter</span></b></h3>
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<span style="color: white;">One of the things that A Link Between Worlds does best is making little changes that challenge the Zelda norm. Zelda has been around forever, and there are so many mechanics that have just existed from game to game, virtually unchanged in 20+ years. One of the biggest, but subtlest things A Link Between Worlds changes is the way it handles items, and more to the point, ammunition. You don't have to collect bombs or arrows or magic. Every item in the game uses the same resource; a "magic" meter which regenerates at a pretty rapid pace.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">This actually has a pretty profound effect on gameplay. At first I was a little dubious, because it means for example, I can only shoot x arrows in y period of time. But gradually I realized that because this meter always refills itself, I had so much more freedom to use items. There is no saving your magic so you can use the Fire Rod to solve puzzles, or holding on to arrows to use them on the boss. You can throw bombs at random enemies all day and it's all good. It makes combat seem a lot more free to be done how you see fit, rather than relying on your sword to do everything. It cleans up the UI nicely, too. It's interesting, because I noticed <a href="http://ramblingofagamer.blogspot.ca/2012/11/the-legend-of-zelda-and-magic.html" target="_blank">a similar effect</a> with the more freeform magic system in the Adventure of Link, but for the past 25 years the series has steered away from that.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZMTmdr7P3dxvQSBEsjGUwxAlh65M_0AA0B6Q8zvpo10BmoGae_fcctv7hiPtdIfCyjeR4L2MVlDVECFjH3MvIeyaMZt_L7nRKcAQC97AL51TEPCZ3DpL_ot89THRjjpL7wbAxXAi7IG8/s1600/zelda-a-link-between-worlds-wall-link.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZMTmdr7P3dxvQSBEsjGUwxAlh65M_0AA0B6Q8zvpo10BmoGae_fcctv7hiPtdIfCyjeR4L2MVlDVECFjH3MvIeyaMZt_L7nRKcAQC97AL51TEPCZ3DpL_ot89THRjjpL7wbAxXAi7IG8/s400/zelda-a-link-between-worlds-wall-link.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<b><span style="color: white;">3) Truly 3D 2D</span></b></h3>
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<span style="color: white;">Link Between Worlds occupies this intriguing space wherein it's a game which is fully rendered in 3D, but it plays like a 2D game, but requires you to think in three dimensions. It's kind of amazing really, that with 3D games having existed for over 15 years, it's a game masquerading as 2D which nails the third dimensional game play better than most "proper" 3D games. Never does a puzzle say " look up, there's a switch on the ceiling you can't see, LOL 3D". Instead it just takes advantage of the fact that in 3D you can so easily render multiple elevations, change perspectives, transition to the backside of a wall, whatever.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">The top down view means you can always see exactly what the designers want you to be able to see, but it's still a world where you can merge with and walk around on the walls and smoothly transition between different elevations. I mean sure, we've been pushing blocks onto lower floors for a long time now, but A Link Between Worlds forces you to look at every room in an entirely different way. Every wall has the potential to be a road. The only other game I can think of that has a similar feel to it is Portal. And I think we all know that comparing anything to Portal is pretty glowing praise.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb5ivttmYkezNKVpw-9jxXo4xSFHlbRXWVClYAptAM2I4JxXQG9RH-qqGIslu-JPcckA2yG17TST7RwMdmqnoRLmLp_0mJR9dFOXngH1W0NtzR4y3tNvAfbRrm5yITl5_jeeohvXafxOQ/s1600/zmasteroct2013_616.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb5ivttmYkezNKVpw-9jxXo4xSFHlbRXWVClYAptAM2I4JxXQG9RH-qqGIslu-JPcckA2yG17TST7RwMdmqnoRLmLp_0mJR9dFOXngH1W0NtzR4y3tNvAfbRrm5yITl5_jeeohvXafxOQ/s400/zmasteroct2013_616.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<b><span style="color: white;">4) The Nostalgia Dance</span></b></h3>
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<span style="color: white;">Let's be real here for a second. I was always going to love a Link Between Worlds. My body is physically unable to dislike a sequel to A Link to the Past just because of my history with the game. So as you can probably imagine, a Link Between Worlds is nostalgia overload for me. The sounds enemies make when you die or when you pick up rupees made me happy. The orchestrated songs from Link to the Past delighted me. The almost identical overworld map gave me all the feels. How many times have I made the journey between Kakariko Village and the Eastern Palace? This time felt little different from when I was 6. It feels like every nook and cranny of A Link Between Worlds was constructed with a nod to fans of A Link to the Past.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">What's more impressive though, is that underneath all the similarities, A Link Between Worlds is it's own game. Every iota of this game perfectly maintains the feel of it's predecessor, but it's a brand new experience. The motto of this game may as well be "the same, but different" because it's stamped all over the place. Despite the similarities it still delivers on substance for returning players, and it's still hugely enjoyable for those who are not. The game is great with or without the nostalgia factor, and the fact that Nintendo has managed to strike such a great balance is pretty impressive. Although with that said, I'll never forgive them for changing the way the tempered sword sounds.</span><br />
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Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-21369490194432964242013-11-04T15:46:00.001-05:002013-11-04T15:46:36.263-05:00Character Controls That "Feel" Good<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb_lebicHxVg0PsVydhQiTsHWp5OpjScChFKoRCwC_LDqizHPefMybegM5s1Or8PuCw-yUWuFY_f3WvX-QNAYkyaHdCHtOgVNcgF9bN7VJI_p8LnFMDlsKG6852sRQJYV1ENp5hSzQbZc/s1600/controller.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb_lebicHxVg0PsVydhQiTsHWp5OpjScChFKoRCwC_LDqizHPefMybegM5s1Or8PuCw-yUWuFY_f3WvX-QNAYkyaHdCHtOgVNcgF9bN7VJI_p8LnFMDlsKG6852sRQJYV1ENp5hSzQbZc/s1600/controller.png" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">Today I'm going to tell you the secret to making a good video game (or at least, one that isn't text/menu based). The trick is to make a game that feels good to play. The story isn't that big a deal, the mechanics are trivial, the graphics and audio are on the sidelines somewhere. Everything else plays second fiddle to having a game with good controls. Many people don't realize it, but subtle nuances in the way a character responds to inputs can make a huge difference on just about every aspect of a game. You've probably played at least one game wherein as soon as you picked up the controller, your character felt sluggish and cluncky and just wrong. From minute 1 you lose most if not all interest in the game. Even when a game <i>does</i> have good controls, subtle decisions as to how those controls work can change a lot about how the player will play that game.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">I mention all of this because over the past couple days I've run into two games that are perfect examples of the effect that small control nuances can have. Specifically, the games I am referring to are <i>Castelvania: Circle of the Moon</i> and <i>Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance</i>. Both games star whip-wielding members of the Belmont Clain, who have almost identical ability sets. Both are games on the Gameboy Advance, and thus have the same buttons available to them. What's most interesting though is that while both games have control issues, they are almost opposites in where those issues lie. In short, Circle of the Moon controls a lot more like the older Castlevania games - it's very slow and forces you to be a bit more premeditated about how you attack. Harmony of Dissonance on the other hand feels a lot more like controlling Alucard from <i>Symphony of the Night</i> - it's much faster, but the actual whip control is only so-so.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9-Qss1BrmabeDKJmmseEmNi6wzz-HabsEizM4oJFdyT7WVMHZ8qw-i_e0tiMz4BHxX-j7v0LMs4kwyI3F8ohkE5QTn7sfwP6R-8UUylHpIgeivKtRBIKRDdfcvsV8kL14LfbfLHGe3Gk/s1600/castlevania_circle_of_the_moon.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9-Qss1BrmabeDKJmmseEmNi6wzz-HabsEizM4oJFdyT7WVMHZ8qw-i_e0tiMz4BHxX-j7v0LMs4kwyI3F8ohkE5QTn7sfwP6R-8UUylHpIgeivKtRBIKRDdfcvsV8kL14LfbfLHGe3Gk/s640/castlevania_circle_of_the_moon.png" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">When it comes to controlling a character who wields a short ranged weapon, I am of the opinion that having precise control over your character is very important. Being locked into a jump arc sucks, especially when you are plunging headlong into the bad guy because you can't shoot him from the other side of the screen. Circle of the Moon manages whip controls pretty much perfectly. The whip is a little slow coming out, but this is a conscious choice that existed in all previous games in the series as well. It forces the player to be a bit more careful, and adds a bit of skill to whip use. Harmony of Dissonance adjusts the delay to the end of the attack, opting for a whip that's faster out of the gate, but doesn't feel anywhere near as satisfying to score hits with. More importantly however is that Harmony of Dissonance affords the player absolutely no mid-air control after your whip has been used. This means that if the enemy alters course after you jump or you realize your jump arc has you bumping into the baddie's big toe, you have no choice but to eat some damage. This one fact annoyed me more than anything else in the game, from start to completion. </span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Another interesting comparison lies in the way dashing a jumping works. When it comes to dashing, Harmony of Dissonance is a hands down winner. Circle of the Moon requires the player to double tap left or right in order to dash, meaning that you frequently find yourself walking when you really need to run. This further means that you often will not jump as far or as high as you expected, as dashing increases the distance of both of these. On the other hand, Harmony of Dissonance has movement controls working quite well. At any time the player can hit R or L to dash right or left respectively, making it very easy to quickly move in and out of range of an enemy. What's more, you can dash in the same direction in very quick succession, making basic movement feel significantly faster, more involved and just all around fun. However, Harmony of Dissonance does <i>not </i>allow you to dash-jump, which is very strange and somewhat jarring. When jumping, you go the exact same speed through the air regardless of whether you were dashing or walking previously. This feels really strange when you spend some time dashing, immediately slow down when airborne, and then resume dashing when touching the ground. You lose all sense of momentum, and it feels like jumps don't go as far as they should.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOErsptgCOeX3g6mMbAcfuWh3vauW6C9vYgqQ7UxE29_A-ADQLl1ILsrbjTBk3gbZkskhQdpClCumlVwrpHSrxE2BmBF5OkZ9QmruRyiCZcwA01L0mP7lc1zDPWYqn2bQCNCfMrjBfP94/s1600/castlevania_harmony_of_dissonance.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOErsptgCOeX3g6mMbAcfuWh3vauW6C9vYgqQ7UxE29_A-ADQLl1ILsrbjTBk3gbZkskhQdpClCumlVwrpHSrxE2BmBF5OkZ9QmruRyiCZcwA01L0mP7lc1zDPWYqn2bQCNCfMrjBfP94/s640/castlevania_harmony_of_dissonance.png" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">Ultimately, the two games are profoundly different in a lot of ways, I just found these control differences really interesting. Circle of the Moon is significantly harder and contains many enemies and areas that feel downright unfair, and yet it's whip combat feels much better simply because you can better control your movement through the air. Running around Dracula's castle is significantly less bothersome and more fun because of how dashing works in Harmony of Dissonance, and yet as soon as your feet leave the ground things start to feel kind of gross and weird. In terms of skill set, Nathan Graves and Juste Belmont are almost identical, and yet controlling them feels almost completely different.</span>Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-57888605289341102682013-10-06T19:07:00.001-04:002013-10-06T19:07:45.917-04:00The Ever Ecletic Saints Row IV<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBzpIJn6jGPN5PyIL86SU1-3cDODGqX6BVg3l1GYRqgEdfvf3uvhixrn1f0x03jnWrLKBoXsKMAITwjmo0rOA399y9Y37mCDMiIJccx-gEG40e2z-AqNqO7dYRwxqTEFxSded-AeG7apc/s1600/saints_row_iv.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="352" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBzpIJn6jGPN5PyIL86SU1-3cDODGqX6BVg3l1GYRqgEdfvf3uvhixrn1f0x03jnWrLKBoXsKMAITwjmo0rOA399y9Y37mCDMiIJccx-gEG40e2z-AqNqO7dYRwxqTEFxSded-AeG7apc/s640/saints_row_iv.png" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">Around this time last year, I played through Saints Row the Third, a game with some <a href="http://ramblingofagamer.blogspot.ca/2012/11/the-little-things-in-saints-row-third.html" target="_blank">strokes of brilliance</a>, and some<a href="http://ramblingofagamer.blogspot.ca/2012/12/the-flip-side-of-saints-row-third.html" target="_blank"> less than ideal</a> aspects. SR3 was something of a flagship that took the series from being a cult hit, to a wild and ridiculous mainstream success. People decided they were a fan of a Grand Theft Auto style game that didn't take itself seriously at all. Then came the <a href="http://saintsrow.wikia.com/wiki/Gangstas_in_Space_(DLC)" target="_blank">DLC</a>. Then the game's published THQ went <a href="http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/01/thq-bankrupt/" target="_blank">bankrupt</a>. Placed in a decidedly strange situation wherin you have a wildly successful franchise, but a publisher who has gone broke, Saints Row developers Volition were put in a pretty awkward place. The result is that what was once intended to be a huge DLC expansion ended up being the standalone Saints Row IV. Some people were thrilled, some people were skeptical. Most just wanted more Professor Genki. As ever though, the question is, is the game any good?</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">So let's start at the beginning. The story of the last 3 Saints Row games follows the growth of the Third Street Saints from a down and out street gang, to somehow becoming a mainstream media empire. In SR4's opening sequences you become President of the United States, witness Earth be destroyed, get placed into a Matrix-like simulation, acquire super powers, and plot the downfall of the alien overlord Zinyak. And yet, this is all done as a tutorial. Sure, it makes sense to introduce the plot through gameplay, but this stuff should be epic. How do you make defending The White House from aliens boring? Make it a tutorial that doesn't have much to do with the game at all. How do we introduce an open world game? Clearly with a hallway shooter segment. Oh by the way, about that shooting? This game is about super powers, so don't sweat it too much. Now here, have a boring, needlessly protracted turret segment.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Unfortunately, that's really the story of Saints Row IV. It inherits everything from Saints Row the Third, and the new is constantly at odds with the old. Saints Row the Third was about jacking cars, driving in the oncoming lane, shooting rival gangs with ridiculous missions, and doing silly activities. All of that is still in Saints Row IV, but what's the point? Why use guns when you can throw fireballs? Why steal cars when you can run faster on foot? That's cute, you can vault over fences... or you could jump 500 feet in the air, dive into the ground and nuke the fence into oblivion. Don't get me wrong, the super powers are definitely fun, there's no doubt., but being tacked onto an existing engine makes them feel significantly more clunky than in say, inFamous. At least until they throw you into a mission where you are without them. It's like they needed to do that occasionally just to justify guns even existing. At least they are pretty good about providing you with crazy vehicles or power armor to use part way through these segments so you don't miss your powers too much.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">As far as the game flow, things feel a lot less coherent than Saints Row the Third, too. You can cruise around Cyber Steelport and do many of the same or similar activities as in real Steelport. Except now there is this whole quest system. Many of the games' quests involve exiting the simulation and talking to a crew member on your ship in the real world. Which seems to me like it doesn't really accomplish much aside from adding travel and loading time to your task. Sure there's a story/atmosphere/otherlameexcuse reason to do it, but let's be real here. Saints Row IV's story is not trying very hard, it's barely there. This game is about being the super powered president. I guess you could say it's making some kind of statement about escapism, but I really don't care. It's just another example of the world with super powers being at odds with the world without. I want to stay in the simulation and run up buildings, don't make me work so hard to get to the fun parts. It seems an odd thing to do, considering a big part of Saints Row the Third's appeal was always making the player feel like they are doing something worthwhile with their time.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">As for the non-story quests, most of them simply involve doing the various activities strewn about Cyber Steelport. On one hand, this is pretty cool, because it means you have a little extra incentive/reward for doing said activities. Except I completed most of them before even getting the respective quests. As a result, the activities felt kind of soulless and unrewarding. Then I got a bit farther in the story, and unlocked a slew of rewards all at once. It just seems to me that the way the game is paced out is all over the place. You start out in a painfully linear/lengthy tutorial, pining for the open world. Then you get it, and are given a world with a million tasks and no incentives. Then you go back to the real world to do some story missions, and are rewarded with incentives in the cyber world. Surely at the very least, they should have restricted what activities you can do at the start a little more, and let the player narrow their focus a little. </span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">What I will say about Saints Row IV though, is that when it get it right, it does it in style. The game is absolutely littered with delicious nerdy references. They feel out of place in a franchise that started as a gritty GTA clone, but I'll not say no to a tongue-in-cheek Metal Gear Solid segment. What's more, Volition once again flex's it's ability to create moments that are absolutely perfect for certain 80's songs. Those moments where you can just rock out and be awesome to a song that fits the moment perfectly.. Well they are absolutely stunning. Really, that's what this game is all about. It's about being awesome, being silly, being nerdy and being ridiculous. Saints Row IV definitely does all of this, but I would personally argue that Saints Row the Third did it better. I think it comes down to expectations. Saints Row the Third has tons of crazy in it, but it has a lot of the typical stuff, too. In contrast, Saints Row IV is thoroughly ridiculous from start to finish, and when everything is crazy, nothing is. The absurdity is still amusing, but not as much as it could have been.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">So I suppose this is a long winded way of saying that Saints Row IV is a decent game, but has a lot of issues. I would say that while Saints Row the Third was a consistently good game, Saints Row IV consistently rocks back and forth between being amazing and being pretty mediocre. Considering the rocky publisher issues Volition experienced during development, it's not entirely surprising that it would end up being a little spotty in places. After all, this was a game that was never intended to be a sequel. I kind of wonder if it shouldn't have stayed as an expansion, it seems to me that a lot of complaints would evaporate had that been the case. In the end of the day though, I did have an overall good time with the game, and I will look forward to any future Saints Row IP. The next time I want to play with super powers though, I'm definitely going to play a game that was built from the ground up with them in mind.</span>Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-33362851473821561812013-08-23T12:00:00.000-04:002013-08-23T12:03:32.349-04:00Impressions of Shin Megami Tensei IV<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Atlus has some pretty big shoes to fill these days. Over the past decade or so, public opinion of the Final Fantasy franchise (and Square Enix as a whole) as steadily declined. In a time where the JRPG titan can't seem to do anything right, a lot of people are turning to Atlus' Shin Megami Tensei series as the new Messiah. This, combined with a <a href="http://club2.nintendo.com/30/" target="_blank">special offer</a> from Nintendo meant Shin Megami Tensei 4 was always going to sell pretty well. However the question is, was Atlus able to perform with all eyes on them? With everyone expecting another legendary masterpiece like Persona 4 (or at least a game to fill the void of good Final Fantasy games) could SMT IV really hit it out of the park? Well, I've played the game for about 25 hours so far, and with that experience I am going to try and answer said question.</span><br />
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Now before I get into my actual analysis of the game, I want to talk a little bit about my experience with the franchise so far. I've played a few hours of Persona 3, but never really sat down and played it consistently. I've also played through Devil survivor, parts of which I <a href="http://ramblingofagamer.blogspot.ca/2013/03/why-devil-survivor-is-superior-to-ni-no.html" target="_blank">really liked</a>, other parts of which I <a href="http://ramblingofagamer.blogspot.ca/2013/04/a-more-complete-look-at-devil-survivor.html" target="_blank">really didn't</a>. The reason I mention these things is because when I first played Devil Survivor, I thought things like the demon fusion, the game's difficulty, earning extra turns etc. were interesting or unique, when in reality they are staples of the entire Shin Megami Tensei franchise. Well, these things are all present in Shin Megami Tensei IV as well, and my opinion on them has not really changed much. Demon fusion is a pretty awesome mechanic, extra turns are really neat (when you get them), and the difficulty is a giant thorn in my side.</span><br />
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So let me talk on the combat/difficulty first, then. SMT games are pretty well known for being hard, and while I don't have a lot of games to compare, SMT IV seems to be no different. Now, I'm all for challenging RPGs, games that require strategy and planning, but there is a very <a href="http://ramblingofagamer.blogspot.ca/2013/02/good-vs-bad-difficulty.html" target="_blank">fine line</a> between challenging and frustrating. I would personally say that SMT IV has at least one foot over that line. I think it all comes down to the bonus turn mechanic. Basically, if you hit an enemy's elemental weakness, get a critical hit, etc. you earn a bonus turn, and same goes for the enemies. If you miss, hit an enemy's resistance etc, you lose 2 turns. On one hand, it's super satisfying to assemble a team of ice damage dealers to take out that boss that's weak to ice. You will probably decimate him. On the other hand, if you don't have that team of ice damage dealers, you will probably fail miserably. Heck, if you get unlucky and miss once or twice, you will fail miserably. </span><br />
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I personally feel that one of the big differences that makes this mechanic interesting in Devil Survivor but terrible in SMT IV is simply the information given to the player. In Devil Survor, you know before you even engage an enemy what their teams strengths and weaknesses are. In SMT IV this is definitely not the case. The first time you encounter an enemy you can only guess what their elemental properties are, and if you guess wrong the entire flow of battle turns against you. If it's a normal enemy then you can probably manage, though there's a good chance you will suffer enough damage to necessitate heading back to base to heal up. But a single wrong move against a boss will likely spell your doom. The only reliable way to beat bosses is to fight them once, use as many elements against them as you can to determine their weaknesses, then immediately reset and go put together a team to counter said boss. That isn't particularly strategic gameplay to me. There are just so many ways for your group to die that are outside of your control, and they are not limited to boss fights. It almost never feels like a death is because you messed up so much as you got unlucky or the enemy was cheap.</span><br />
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Beyond issues with the battle system, the game has plenty of other weaknesses as well. In short: The story moves slower than any other game I can think of. It took ~10 hours for anything of note to happen, many full games aren't even that long. Money is pretty hard to get your hands on, and yet doesn't seem to offer a whole lot besides convenience. I'd rather spend money to summon a demon that I could catch for free than buy a new sword that makes no perceivable difference in battle. You can only have one active quest at a time? Really? Navigating the "world map" is very awkward and usually involves visiting every location to find the one you are actually looking for. Once you leave the starting area, the game barely even tries to direct you any more. Leveling up feels kind of useless, as stat increases don't really make a noticeable difference in battle. The characters are pretty uninteresting and you'r "party members" seem completely superfluous. And that's all that I can honestly think about at the moment.</span><br />
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The game is definitely not all bad though. There are a lot of neat little things about it that kept me playing as long as I have. The demon fusion system is as interesting as ever, and I find it pretty enjoyable planning out the ultimate demon team (including reserves to swap in if one dies, or to heal outside of battle). SMT IV also has a system where demons can teach your avatar abilities, but if the avatar already knows the ability in question, it just gets stronger. I find it really satisfying to plan out demon fusions in order to get the most powerful demons, but also give the avatar +8 in the abilities I want. The app system is interesting, allowing the player to choose which bonuses they value most (extra skill slots, more demon reserves, regen mp while walking, convince demons to give you money, etc). Limiting the number of each type of consumable item the player can hold is a great idea in a dungeon crawler game. Any time you die you can return exactly to where you were (although, resetting the game seems to be faster). Furthermore, another interesting part of dieing is that you can pay to be revived with money, or you can use the 3DS' play coins, making SMT IV the first game I have personally seen to actually use play coins (though again, resetting is free). And finally, what little plot I have seen is fairly interesting.</span><br />
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All in all Shin Megami Tensei IV is a game that I want desperately to love, but so far haven't really managed to. There are periods where I have really enjoyed the game, but far more times where I was frustrated or lost or bored. At this point I have essentially stopped playing because I find I'm not particularly interested in wandering about trying to find where I'm supposed to go, dieing horribly, and then spending the next 3 hours grinding. Chances are I would find the game a lot more enjoyable if I were to drop the difficulty down, but the fact remains that "normal" mode doesn't on the whole feel like a particularly enjoyable game to me. I don't want to drop the difficulty because I find it too hard, I want to drop the difficulty because it feels abusive and punishing and unbalanced. But this is assuming I ever go back to it. On that matter, only time will tell.</span>Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-81811231321583214612013-07-22T22:23:00.000-04:002013-07-22T22:23:08.475-04:00Radiant Historia Thoughts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: white;">It's no secret that the JRPG genre isn't exactly flourishing as it once did. Not outside of Japan anyways. Yet while the well dries up and the big franchises flounder, a little company called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atlus_games" target="_blank">Atlus has our backs</a>. It's thanks to them that we have games like the Shin Megami Tensei and Etrian Odyssey series. They were the ones who published the likes of Ogre Battle and Growlanser. The were even responsible for bringing Demon's Souls and Disgaea to the north, where they were wildly successful. In recent years Atlus has become the west's biggest and best source of the JRPGs that AAA studios won't make any more. So when I was told that they had made a superb Chrono Trigger inspired JRPG for the DS, I knew I had to play it. In fact, the game was so popular that Atlus had to do a second run of production because it was so in demand once people knew it existed. I've finally managed to find the time to devote to the game, and so I thought I would give my impressions, having beaten it in it's entirety.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Radiant Historia is a game about timelines, and as such evokes a lot of comparisons to Chrono Trigger. The basic idea is that the game is split into two timelines, and the player has the ability to jump to any key event experienced in either timeline. The idea is that if you play a single timeline, you end up running into roadblocks, and to progress you much either go back in time or spend some time in the other timeline in order to acquire a new ability or change a key event. The idea is that the world is quickly charging towards it's end, and before the game has even begun the world has been doomed several times. It up to the protagonist, Stocke, to manipulate events and lead the world down a different path. Interestingly enough, this leads to a lot of interesting situations where the decision that keeps the world alive isn't necessarily the decision that is best in a given situation. Many choices you can make will lead to a scenario where the world ends, resulting in a "game over" ending. </span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">What's interesting about these endings is that none of them are all bad. They all give the impression that your decision had a positive impact, but in the end it did not divert the world's path to destruction. You won the battle, but the war was ultimately won. Then you simply go back in time and pick the other option, and unfortunately this is where the game's cracks begin to show. As intriguing as the time traveling system is, it's both incredibly repetitive and surprisingly linear. The game may seem wide open at first, but you quickly find that the way forward is always to play one path until you hit a dead end, then switch paths until you hit another one, and repeat. Similarly, because you spend so much time jumping between key events, you end up covering the same ground over and over again. There are many points where you cannot avoid the intermediary events between key points, and all the scene skipping in the world doesn't mean you won't be running through Lazvil Hills and the Gran Plains a dozen times over. </span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">This goes doubly for the side quests, unfortunately. Side quests tend to be a lot more interesting, and a lot more fulfilling, but also a lot more frustrating. Many quests will require you to progress much further into the timeline before you can complete them, and some even require you to skip between timelines. When you stumble across an object and think "oh hey, that guy back in that place at that time needed this thing", it's very satisfying to make that connection. But for every time that happens, there's two where you completely forget who wanted the object, where they are located and what exact time window you need to be in to talk to them. What's more, after jumping back and forth in time so much it becomes very easy to forget what happened in what timeline, what you need to actually do to progress from event A to event B etc. Actually completing all of the sidequests without a walkthrough is an extremely monumental task, but it really didn't have to be if the game just had a proper quest log and a better indication of how to progress along a timeline you've long since forgotten about.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">But enough about timelines and all that jazz. One of the most interesting parts of Radiant Historia is that it has one of the most interesting takes on turn based combat I have personally witnessed. It goes a bit like this: Your team of three faces off against opponents who are arranged on a 3x3 grid. Some enemies take up 2 or 4 or 6 or even all 9 enemies, but most only take a single spot. Among your arsenal of abilities are skills which can knock enemies about, allowing you to position them in opportune locations for killing expedience. Knock an enemy on top of another one, and subsequent attacks will hit both enemies. Further, you can also do things like knock them into the air, onto traps, out of buff tiles on the ground, etc. Adding to this is the fact that every party member has the ability to switch places in the turn order with any combatant. This can be used to switch the order your guys attack in, or you can swap with enemies in order to try and bunch all your allies' turns together for big combos. It's a novel system that in many cases feels as much like a puzzle as anything else. What's the best way to group up the most enemies as you can? Or is it faster to burn one down at a time? Which character has the best abilities for this situation? Will you need buffs more than movement abilities? etc.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">However, as with the timeline mechanic, this battle system is definitely not all roses either. First and foremost is the fact that the game seems to have rather poor battle pacing. Each area contains a TON of enemies, and especially considering how much time you spend walking back and forth through the same old areas, the fights can get old fast. While you have the ability to avoid most enemies on the area map, towards the end of the game you start to need experience quite dearly. Couple that with quite low availability for some of the party members, and it becomes a question of, "grind now or grind later?". Now if you had told me this in the first 15 hours of the game, I wouldn't have minded. The battle system is pretty fun. But eventually around the half way mark through the game, battles just get very grueling. The average number of enemies you fight goes up to about 5, and weird things start happening with the turn order. All of a sudden it becomes apparent that how fast your characters are doesn't matter as much as how close their speed is to eachother (so they can build proper combos). When enemies ambush you, you start seeing battles where you can't even attack until you've hopefully survived all 5 enemies attacking 2-3 times. The result is battles just get less desirable, you want to avoid them more, but bosses actually start getting pretty hard. Thus the aforementioned grinding conundrum.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">As far as the plot is concerned, the game presents a pretty compelling story. As I mentioned earlier, the idea is that you have to try and nudge the world's destiny on a path that doesn't lead to destruction. Unsurprisingly this involves all the tropes of an evil empire, beast tribes that hate humans, people misusing mana etc etc etc. Unfortunately there isn't a whole lot I can actually say without spoiling it. What I will say though is that as the game went on, I was very interested to see where each plot line would lead, and how they would inevitably join back up again. Around the 1/3 way mark things start to get really interesting and it really motivated me to push on through the lul that comes soon after. However the plot, too, is not without issue. Once again we come back to the repetition the time mechanic brings. Because you have two separate timelines that advance in parallel, things often seem like they are going at a snails pace. Until you near the end of the game, it's often really hard to see how things are relevant in the big picture, especially when you start mixing up the history of each line in your head. In the end of the day the payoff is pretty good though. I found the ending to be very touching, in a way that very few games ever are.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">I guess ultimately what I'm trying to say here is that I'm very conflicted on my final opinion of Radiant Historia. It's chock full of really interesting ideas. At times those ideas are very well executed. At other times the game drags like nobody's business. There was a stretch of about 8 hours within the game where I went from loving it, to hating it to loving it again. In the end of the day I would probably conclude that Radiant Historia would be amazing if it was about 25-30 hours long rather than 40. I think the truth behind Radiant Historia though is that, judging by the lack of advertising and the limited initial run, Atlus probably just had some crazy ideas they wanted to play with. I doubt it was ever intended to be more than a fun little experiment, and I suppose in that regard it succeeded. Whatever the case may be, I would still recommend that any avid JRPG fan give it a go. If you are willing to overlook some of the issues I outlined above, then it could easily classify as one of the best JRPGs released in the last 5 years. Even if you can't see past the flaws, it's a one-of-a-kind experience. It truly has the makings of something great. Whether you think it achieved that or not may well vary from my own opinion.</span>Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-57776186961785192582013-07-03T19:17:00.002-04:002013-07-03T19:17:36.888-04:00Wind Water and Making Travel Fun<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: white;">As any fan of the Zelda series likely knows, an<a href="http://ca.ign.com/articles/2013/06/11/e3-2013-zelda-wind-waker-hd-release-window-announced" target="_blank"> HD remake</a> of the game is coming to the Wii U this October. This announcement sparked a bunch of discussion among people I know, and as with most Wind Waker discussions, this eventually lead to a conversation about traversing the open ocean. It's a pretty notorious and ill-loved aspect of Wind Waker, and a direct source of a lot of hate on the game. So after some discussion and some thinking, I thought I would spend some time talking about this aspect of Wind Waker, and travel time in video games in general.</span><div>
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<span style="color: white;">So at it's root, the issue here is pretty obvious. Travelling for large amounts of time is typically uneventful and boring. This isn't always the case, some games manage to make it interesting, but I'll talk about that more later. Essentially what it comes down to, is that there needs to be something to occupy your mind continually while travelling. Sometimes this can be as simple as having something really pretty to look at. Travelling can in itself occupy some brain power too, especially if navigating something like a city, which would also them have traffic and such. However if you are crossing a distance large enough for it to be labelled as "travelling", then chances are the points in time where you need to wonder "which way do I go now?" are far enough apart that there is plenty of time for boredom to creep in. And yet, other times you may be travelling by air or by sea. In which case, you are likely moving in a straight line and navigation isn't even a worry. </span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">So let me give you another example of a game that does travel time poorly. You may have heard of <a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1632-Just-Cause-2" target="_blank">Just Cause </a>2. It's an open world game with a massive world which focuses on blowing up property and doing silly things with the grappling hook. However it also so happens that the world is so large, getting from one point to another can take an agonizingly long time. To make matters worse, being set in the fairly rural island nation of Panau, the roads are fairly unoccupied, and more to the point it's almost always better to fly places anyways. Flying awesome jets is cool and all, but soaring through the skies in a straight line for 5 minutes at a time is pretty dull. It's to the point that, dying is really only annoying because it means you are going to need to make that journey again. The only times that travelling is fun, is when you discover a secret of some description (which only exist on the ground), or you are grappling hook jumping (which is slower than most vehicles). I've personally never dreaded travel more than in this game.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">With that said, let's now move on to the other end of the scale. I've never <i>not</i> dreaded travelling as much as in <a href="http://ramblingofagamer.blogspot.ca/2012/11/the-little-things-in-saints-row-third.html" target="_blank">Saints Row the Third</a>. The game does 2 main things to keep travelling fun. First off, it's entire city is designed to be dense rather than vast. It never really takes that long to get from one place to your destination. The other, is that it offers constant opportunities for rewards along the way. Going on foot? Might as well go streaking at the same time. Going by car? Drive in the opposite lane and dodge cars. Going by air? Fly close to the buildings, barely missing. All these things reward the player with Respect points, and this means that you always have something to do no matter where you are going. What's more, it adds challenge to travel - it's certainly harder to drive against incoming traffic, but if you are rewarded for doing so why would you ever not do it?</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">So the question then becomes, where does Wind Waker play into all this? Personally I feel like it depends a lot on how you play the game, but for the average player it probably lands closer to the Just Cause side of things. The Great Ocean is doubtlessly vast and mostly empty, but It's not devoid of distractions. To me, being something of a completionist, I never found the ocean that boring. It was always enough to always be on the lookout for baddies, treasure and the splash of fish in the distance. There aren't always a lot of active things to do, but for those that care about them, there are plenty of things to be on the lookout for. By the time you start to feed all the fish and find all the treasure, you start getting warp spells to aid in your travelling. For someone who maybe doesn't care about dredging up every sunken treasure or feeding all the fish to uncover the map, I definitely see why this seafaring would be dreadfully boring though.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">In the end of the day, the only reason Wind Waker's ocean was ever so big was really because of the technical limitations of the Gamecube. The game's engine needed enough time to make sure nearby islands were properly loaded before the player came in range, and increasing their travel time was the way to do it. The HD remake will have improvements in place to make the experience more painless, and it's unquestionably for the best. I think we all know that the game's real bugbear was that money grubbing &*$% Tingle anyways.</span></div>
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Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-47729977299055263872013-07-01T15:12:00.002-04:002013-07-01T15:12:49.531-04:00Thoughts on Penny Arcade's on the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness 4<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: white;">Over the past couple of years there have been few games that I've looked forward to more than those put out by <a href="http://zeboyd.com/" target="_blank">Zeboyd Games</a>, the 2 man crew responsible for Breath of Death VII, Cthulhu Saves the World, and now episodes 3 and 4 of Penny Arcade's series of games. Their work just contains a certain quality to them that few games do - a quality that says that the people making these games love JRPGs as much as I do. So having beat Rainslick 4, and knowing that Zeboyd is <a href="http://zeboyd.com/2013/07/01/lessons-from-our-previous-rpgs-and-their-impact-on-cosmic-star-heroines-design/" target="_blank">looking for feedback</a>, I thought that I should compile my thoughts on their most recent game in one place.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Easily the biggest thing that I enjoyed about Rainslick 4 is all the different ways to approach a battle. As someone looking for that depth of gameplay, I really appreciated coming up to a battle, losing, adjusting my strategy and switching some equipment, and then winning. It's like a puzzle, but not the annoying kind, it's a puzzle that involves doing the things I actually enjoy. Solving the puzzle can be very satisfying, although I do wish it was a little easier to switch out accessories once you've seen what you are up against in a given battle. </span><br />
<span style="color: white;">However on this note I feel I should also mention that, by the end of the game there were actually <i>too many</i> different permutations of party members and equipment. With 20 or so party members, all with unique abilities, it get's really hard to keep track of who can do what, how you have their equipment set up etc. Not to mention that the game's UI really doesn't work when dealing with that many characters.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">On a similar (though somewhat ironic) note, I was not a fan of the way the party was separated in 2 until the end. It really messes with the pacing when you jump back and forth between the two. It works well narratively to say "ok this group is stuck doing this for a bit, let's see what the other group is doing". It's frustrating in terms of gameplay though. Every time you switch you are going from a stronger group to a weaker one with a totally different set of abilities, plus it makes managing your equipment fairly awkward at times. However where the irony comes in is that, I actually felt like this part of the game before the two parties merge was the best. Reason being, the game felt a lot tighter and more coherent when dealing with groups of 6-8 monsters. There are lots of options without being overwhelming. When all is said and done, I ultimately prefer the Rainslick 3 model better over all. Having a larger degree of customization on a smaller number of characters get's rid of a lot of the issues facing the system. It's a lot easier to keep track of what each class / person has available to them, it's a lot easier to build UI for, and I think it just builds a better narrative.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Beyond all this, I also felt like the game's pacing in general was a bit off, and it could have done with being a few hours shorter. Zeboyd has always done a good job of keeping the pace up in their games, with snappy combat systems. In Rainslick 4 it just felt like the variety of gameplay was very thin, and in some places it really started to wear thin (most notably, the back to back battlefield and Q'atra dungeons). It just feels like 95% of the game is spent in combat or exposition, which is odd because objectively that's been the case in all Zeboyd games, but I never really felt it before. Not to mention that there is more exploration and secrets to find in Rainslick 4 than any of their other games. I think what it comes down to a few things. In previous titles you could spend more time examining objects and such which makes the environments more interesting and gives you something else to do (As much as I'm sure it was a giant pain writing and coding text for every gravestone). I also felt like the areas in Rainslick 4 were just less interesting in general. They looked and sounded amazing, but there just felt like a lot less variety and creativity. As a result it feels more like a really pretty funnel to the next point of interest.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Aside from that I only really have 3 other, smaller complaints. The first is that I felt like the rewards from optional end-game content were gravely insufficient. It was really rewarding to me personally to complete these challenges, but it seemed like each of these areas gave very little exp (understandable, given the game's balance philosophy). I never ended up using the ultimate shoe weapon, the "secret" monster or the "secret" monster trainer. The only reward that really felt substantial was the ability to face Fish Force again, and steal their mascot. This leads me to the second complaint. The game is way to focused on magic. Which is fine to a degree, magic has a tendency to be more interesting, and is somewhat balanced in that magic users tend to be more squishy. It just feels wrong that once the groups meet up, there doesn't seem to be much use to strength types. And the final complaint: the game's writing took an odd turn in this title, though being as that wasn't really Zeboyd's role in this game I won't expound on it.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Ultimately, Rainslick 4 just wasn't quite as awesome as I was ultimately hoping. It has amazing art, amazing music, a lot of really funny moments, tons of cool secrets and very good core gameplay. It's held back by a fair number of things here and there though. Many of them are small issues that are kind of niggling things that are hard to put your finger on. Many of them are quite possibly just personal preference. In the end of the day though, I would not hesitate to give Rainslick 4 a hardy recommendation to anyone who enjoys RPGs the way they were meant to be made.</span>Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-19317323577501451002013-06-26T13:51:00.001-04:002013-06-26T13:51:55.196-04:00Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgement Thoughts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBJZ2KObSDfnbOIhaoX9BrZmnvLaRUut7_-v5cAAlQm5h3mEAKintNbCcbck8ftlEuwg6bUFlPPdyTcHysQ_non7znexzQba11_SD6CYeiD0yZuq-SwpUOu0JqumFi7hqJtV6x7Jq681g/s1600/vh_logo_5-1-09.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBJZ2KObSDfnbOIhaoX9BrZmnvLaRUut7_-v5cAAlQm5h3mEAKintNbCcbck8ftlEuwg6bUFlPPdyTcHysQ_non7znexzQba11_SD6CYeiD0yZuq-SwpUOu0JqumFi7hqJtV6x7Jq681g/s640/vh_logo_5-1-09.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">I am a big fan of Strategy RPGs, in fact my <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_Tactics" target="_blank">favorite game</a> just so happens to be one. SRPGs just seem to have a way of offering me all the things that I want. I get a lot of joy out of creating a fighting force that is customized to my specifications. Creating a long term plan for what I want my team to look like and then gradually seeing that come to fruition is really fun to me. So when I heard about Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgement, a game that was suggested to me because ever character's stats and proficiencies are directly tied to your actions, I was instantly interested. Of course it's a $15 game from 3 years ago, but I just recently got around to playing through it. Having beaten the game, I thought it was worth taking a look at what it did right and... everything else.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">So what <i>does</i> it get right? The first thing that comes to mind is that the battles are all pretty varied. There are a fair number of them for such a cheap game, and very few of them feature the simplistic "kill all enemies / the boss" objective. Even the missions that do have you simply murdering all the baddies almost always have something else to spice things up, often some object on the map that can be interacted with. This can mean a boulder you have to push down a hill, or a flaming brazier you can shove over to block off a path, or a variety of other things. Between those, and all of the treasures scattered across each map, every battle stays pretty fresh. Beyond that, the only other positive thing I can really say about the game is that it's stat system really is quite extensive, offering a ton of potential customization to each character. However... it's not so simple as that.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Pm8XsXLZAyuGFMZYrloSjAxtfjuP7ZFVEO5oMx6YTN-QX3n3qM6_Psaa7NMMQodBJLWpMdZVA7ZIx5ma0N7fhMTEkiI9qm26FNLxEVltaapWpBgLuUnFsP7InTfwXEjuxnmp9Vaz8hY/s1600/vhfoj-3-590x331.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Pm8XsXLZAyuGFMZYrloSjAxtfjuP7ZFVEO5oMx6YTN-QX3n3qM6_Psaa7NMMQodBJLWpMdZVA7ZIx5ma0N7fhMTEkiI9qm26FNLxEVltaapWpBgLuUnFsP7InTfwXEjuxnmp9Vaz8hY/s640/vhfoj-3-590x331.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">The unfortunate fact of the matter is that Flames of Judgement is a game with a list of issues a mile long, a list that I couldn't possibly sum up in this post. But ultimately, most of the big issues end up relating back to the stat system in some way. Which is unfortunate, because I've always really liked the whole "your stats grow based on your actions" kind of systems. I think the issue Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgement faces however is that it just went way overboard. At a guess, I would say that each of your 6 characters have something like 45-50 stats. These include your core stats, your combat stats, your weapon proficiencies and your magic proficiencies. Many of them make perfect sense and are no surprise. Sure, you get better at using swords the more you use them, and melee attacks while your at it. Sure, your MP and magic stats go up the more you cast spells. The combat stats are just silly though. Why do we need a stat the indicates how much damage you do when you move more than 3 squares before attacking? Or when attacking from a higher elevation? More to the point, why do we need to care about these stats increasing?</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">As I said, the overwhelming depth of this system ends up causing several issues. For me though, I think what really killed it for me was the fact that, each character has so many stats it's hard to get a good impression of how strong they currently are, and how they are progressing. There is no one screen you can look at and see "oh, he has 12 strength, that's pretty good". In fact, each character has a strength, mentality and agility stat, but as far as I can tell they don't actually do anything but indicate the suggested route the player should guide that character along. These stats never change, and within a couple hours of starting the game the character with the second lowest strength was my best physical attacker. Now this may seem like a small issue, but I believe that in a game such as Vandal Hearts, progression is everything. If you can't get a good idea where your characters stand, then your system has failed. These systems work when you have a good idea where you want your character to go, how to get there, and how far along that path you currently are. Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgement fails to varying degrees in all three areas.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGpvqJraa3m4M5b2xQFHQnIzhbYP8dITPg5N4L_xre1KuWv9KhsG9a1hbr4IxA0LgH23ScKvXiieGdLSfx5qnBIu4EkCTdifHeShDPfffSTGGGdpFByD55Bi73Mdqagd48tEal5sEzKQk/s1600/vandalflame1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGpvqJraa3m4M5b2xQFHQnIzhbYP8dITPg5N4L_xre1KuWv9KhsG9a1hbr4IxA0LgH23ScKvXiieGdLSfx5qnBIu4EkCTdifHeShDPfffSTGGGdpFByD55Bi73Mdqagd48tEal5sEzKQk/s640/vandalflame1.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">The other big issue to me was simply the game's usability and just the general feel of it. Just about every aspect of the game feels obtuse and lackluster in some way. Sure, I can understand if a $15 title uses still images for it's story scenes. But I don't understand why it takes as long to load some static images as other games take to load entire 3D cities. Why is it that the only time I can save is when in camp, but I have no ability to enter the camp menu myself? Do I really have to fight and win a battle just to save the game? Easily the worst offender in this regard is the game's inventory menu. It's understandable to some degree that it's hard to display so many stats, but it really wouldn't have been that hard to make a more usable menu system. To do just about anything requires you to scroll to a tab within a tab within a tab, then scroll all the way down a menu. Heck, I didn't even know how to equip items until 1/3 of the way into the game because the equipment screen requires you to scroll down to a second screen, but offers no indication that you can do so.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">In the end of the day, Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgement is a game that exudes mediocrity from every pore. I could spend all day typing and still not list every minor issue I take with the game. You'll notice I didn't even mention the game's plot or it's characters, but I've detailed the most offensive issues here. Ultimately it's a game that is at it's best mildly interesting, and at it's worst an obtuse sack of annoying. Much of that is forgivable in a $15 title, but the most grievous issues plaguing the game are as a result of bad decisions and bad design, not because of a lack of budget. I'm glad that I did play the game, however. It's games like Flames of Judgement that we learn the most from - games with a few interesting ideas followed by a massive list of things not to do. With that said though, I wouldn't recommend it if you are looking to y'know, have fun with your video game.</span>Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-48066081079833610302013-06-11T14:02:00.001-04:002013-06-11T14:03:43.234-04:00E3 2013, Sony Microsoft and Nintendo Impressions<span style="color: white;">So, E3 is going on, and as always the big news is in the form of the Big 3's conferences. Of course, Nintendo didn't hold an actual conference, instead opting instead to do another Nintendo Direct, but we will include them anyways. This year's E3 is extra special, because it's the period of hype for the next generation. Information on the next round of consoles (sans the ailing Wii U of course) is just coming to light, people are forming their allegiances, and Microsoft and Sony are fighting tooth and nail to earn said allegiances. It's an exciting time to be a gamer, to be sure. So in honor of E3, I thought I would discuss my thoughts on the the big 3's E3 presence, and my thoughts going forward with the next generation.</span><br />
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<b><span style="color: white; font-size: x-large;">Microsoft</span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4OUZEHEFdBrUV7QUbS8s-fDgCRTO0xJOHnFS0ed0GgZ4-dPcLRdA04-_GXvibOB9rUKv_bcJdEpWkIM83Z4W3BhHjZolpSSjMQhY1SGeIJgouJaR_l9arIhFEqc8YudgNF6SY_TFynvY/s1600/MicrosoftE3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4OUZEHEFdBrUV7QUbS8s-fDgCRTO0xJOHnFS0ed0GgZ4-dPcLRdA04-_GXvibOB9rUKv_bcJdEpWkIM83Z4W3BhHjZolpSSjMQhY1SGeIJgouJaR_l9arIhFEqc8YudgNF6SY_TFynvY/s640/MicrosoftE3.png" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">If you've been following the information pertaining to the Xbox One, then you know that Microsoft had nothing to lose and everything to gain from E3. Their focus on non-gaming media and their stance on used games and internet requirements turned a lot of people off, at least among the vocal minority. On the whole I would say Microsoft put on a pretty good conference, though. People wanted to see games out of Microsoft, and they got them. Of course many of the games on display were in fact titles that will be available on PC and/or PS4, but people seemed pretty excited for the most part. I can't really claim that anything really caught my attention aside from Project Spark and Titanfall in terms of games, though I'm a fan of the in-built streaming capabilities. We know the PS4 has similar, but I would certainly prefer stream to Twitch (partnered with Microsoft) than Ustream (partnered with Sont). Oh, and there was a rape joke, that was fun.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">When all was said and done, I don't really feel that Microsoft came out of their conference too much better of than they were, though. People said they wanted to see games, they saw games, and yet all they were talking about was the elephant who remains in the room, and the $499 price point. I feel like Microsoft tried to just sweep the talk of DRM under the rug and hope games would make people forget, but it doesn't seem to have worked. I think the better approach would have been to subtly show how the online requirements and DRM can work to the player's advantage. Obviously they aren't going to get on stage and discuss all the features everyone is up in arms about, they are there to build hype not draw attention to their detractors. Yet, if I had seen a good reason for an Xbone to be constantly online, then maybe my opinion on the console would change. Instead, we got Smart Glass awkwardly and aggressively shoved in our faces.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">I think Microsoft has managed to seal their own fate on this one. As soon as they announced the price point that was all anyone was going to take out of that conference, and it's a doozy. What confuses me the most about the Xbone continues to be the question of demographic. Who is supposed to buy this thing? Microsoft has touted this thing as the one device that will take over your living room, seemingly aimed at everyone. Yet, between used game restrictions, online requirements and a $500 price tag, it seems to me they have managed to alienate every demographic in some way. Sure, it's understandable that packaging a kinect with it will drive the price up, but casual or non-gamers aren't going to buy this thing at that cost. The same is true of college students, whom I assumed was the primary demographic.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">I don't know what Microsoft does going forward. It seems to me their only options are to back pedal, and hope they regain enough good will to not be a total disaster. Perhaps the more likely course of action is that they simply stick to their guns and try to stay lean and economical. No doubt regardless of whatever missteps the Xbone will still sell many, many units. If they can maximize their income from every unit, then maybe they can hang on. Either way, it would certainly seem Microsoft has thrown away any chance at the top spot in this generation.</span><br />
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<b><span style="color: white; font-size: x-large;">Sony</span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOzxf_vkJzWMjxBsNY3qeEpvLlL-m4BfkyRX4GDrlvHY34xyORIlR4NbQl8EPWQVtXBqMNBgaqcdjDTNfd3Ki-ulSyTRnS7S3bLZomCa0P3votjugaM0qPuyJMTxEu-c7X94UmhlVjJ68/s1600/ps4_used_is_ok_30639_640screen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="326" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOzxf_vkJzWMjxBsNY3qeEpvLlL-m4BfkyRX4GDrlvHY34xyORIlR4NbQl8EPWQVtXBqMNBgaqcdjDTNfd3Ki-ulSyTRnS7S3bLZomCa0P3votjugaM0qPuyJMTxEu-c7X94UmhlVjJ68/s640/ps4_used_is_ok_30639_640screen.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">In truth, Sony didn't need to do much. The advantage was theirs to throw away. All they had to do was show up, not murder any puppies, and be heralded as the great prophets of gen 8. Sony basically did just that, and then some. There were several games on show, including Final Fantasy Versus XIII (rebranded as FFXV) and Kingdom Hearts III, and indie titles like Transistor and Octodad. In truth the games were kind of secondary in this conference, to me any ways. It was predictably a bunch of trailers that didn't say much about the games in question. I will say that I was very impressed that Sony managed to get live demos of both Assassin's Creed IV and Watch Dogs, despite Ubisoft <i>not</i> doing a live demo of said games in their own freaking conference. There was also a first look at gameplay from Bungie's Destiny, which at first didn't do it for me, but as it went on and the RPG features came to light, my interest was piqued.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">I think the biggest thing about this conference was the subtle things like the language they used. It seemed to me like every word in Sony's presentation was chosen very carefully, and it went a long way. I loved the referential humor that they <i>knew</i> the people watching the show would get. More to the point though, Sony clearly had been paying extremely close attention to what Microsoft's detractors were saying. Almost point for point, Sony had something to say about every one of the Xbone's weaknesses. Oh, you are obstructive to indie's? Here's 20 minutes of indie games on PS4. You restrict used games? Yea, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA" target="_blank">we don't</a>. They may have well have been shouting "PS4 does what Xbone don't", but instead they were just taking subtle jabs there weren't off-putting, but reassuring.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">Then there was the final nail in the coffin. They announced the $399 price point, and it was all over for Microsoft. Not only is the PS4 significantly less restrictive, more powerful, devoid of major privacy concerns and just more gamer friendly in general, but it's $100 cheaper. That makes a big difference. That means more early adopters, which means more third party developers, which means more exclusives, which is ultimately all that it comes down to. The PS4 even has some small advantage in their Gaikai cloud streaming service, but what that ultimately ends up looking like has yet to be seen. On the whole, it would seem that the PS4 is in a decisive lead some 5 months before either console is released.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRBqg8wuGYb5F_rRL5Xa8Qq9fZOpr0CzKEb_2XVoAwiNBDcR7mHEYPqsZQ45NwoUk5miIfxW8shT5N2FkItwa2NL1uZ6fP79Gh32_c1KGmv_tUZF0wlYV9y9XMaky5wVzSzDb1cK_TnTQ/s1600/11b-1360845116.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRBqg8wuGYb5F_rRL5Xa8Qq9fZOpr0CzKEb_2XVoAwiNBDcR7mHEYPqsZQ45NwoUk5miIfxW8shT5N2FkItwa2NL1uZ6fP79Gh32_c1KGmv_tUZF0wlYV9y9XMaky5wVzSzDb1cK_TnTQ/s640/11b-1360845116.png" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">It's very strange to me that Nintendo seems so far removed from the competition of late. Ever since the last generation started it's felt like Sony and Microsoft have been duking it out, and Nintendo has been off in the corner doing their own thing. This has never been quite so apparent as with their approach to this year's E3. Sony and Microsoft are battling for supremacy, holding huge 2 hour conferences in E3. Meanwhile, Nintendo's console has been out for 7 months and they put together a 40 minute pre-recorded presentation from the empty 7th floor of their office in Japan. In truth, it really wasn't any different from every other Nintendo Direct that has been put out, except that it happens to have happened during E3.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">In that light, I would say that on the whole, the presentation was pretty unsurprising. Every game that was shown was either an already announced (or, at least known to be existing) game, or a highly predictable one (zomg, who would have guessed! Mario Kart, ON THE WII U?!?!?!). Of course there isn't anything wrong with that. Nintendo has subsisted on their first party titles and handhelds for over a decade now. People love their Nintendo franchises. None the less, there is clearly a lot of excitement behind the announcement of the next Super Smash Bros (apparently entitled simply "Super Smash Bros" ?). With games like that, a closer look at Wind Waker HD, and another look at Platinum Games' Wonderful 101 and Bayonetta 2 it seems likely that Wii U sales will begin to pick up.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">And then there was "X". The next game from Monolith Soft, the rumored Wii U successor to Xenoblade Chronicles. In truth, I think I'm more excited about this title than any other I have seen from E3 thus far. I mean it's like Xenoblade, but high def, with more awesome mechs, mechs which the player can ride, and it's a more proper RPG. It looks pretty <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6Q4ld4uqcY" target="_blank">amazing</a>, and is the first Wii U title I have seen that really screams "you need this console. You cannot miss this game". Of course I was always going to grab a Wii U once Zelda games started being released, but X might finally be the first third part core game that really pushes the Wii U into peoples' homes.</span><br />
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Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-63572973545507426522013-06-06T19:51:00.000-04:002013-06-06T19:51:25.408-04:00Fire Emblem and Player Choice<span style="color: white;"><br /></span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXlzv2oVUqLD3DVOwpE8ecl615myZUYLcRoTwwDd5nqaBGq1vTT5JIWU6CPHb-UR-Y9j4KaMMEA_NEoqJyekEd-EX0u281gbvshgFVnHul3wvX6Dl7rSLGi3b5O6JgAVYcjblLTpwoAtc/s1600/fire-emblem-lords.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXlzv2oVUqLD3DVOwpE8ecl615myZUYLcRoTwwDd5nqaBGq1vTT5JIWU6CPHb-UR-Y9j4KaMMEA_NEoqJyekEd-EX0u281gbvshgFVnHul3wvX6Dl7rSLGi3b5O6JgAVYcjblLTpwoAtc/s640/fire-emblem-lords.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;">So I've been on a bit of a Fire Emblem kick for a while now. A couple of months ago I finally played through Path of Radiance, and following that I made my way through <a href="http://ramblingofagamer.blogspot.ca/2013/05/fire-emblem-awakening-review.html" target="_blank">Awakening</a>. More recently, I'm in the middle of re-playing plain old <a href="http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_cCkRfS29-wEYhtTiA_Jko_YeIolyJLD" target="_blank">Fire Emblem</a>, the GBA game from 2003. I've found it kind of interesting to look at how the series has evolved over the past 10 years. Of course the series didn't ever leave Japan until 2003, but since then it has picked up significantly more widespread appeal. I can't help but feel like several of the changes made to the series since then were made in the interest of appealing to the new fans rather than the old. So with that said, today I wanted to talk a bit about choosing characters, and why it was better back in the day.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">So if you aren't familiar with the Fire Emblem series, here is the quick and dirty of it. It's a series of SRPGs which are largely character-driven. Throughout the span of the game you tend to get a large number of playable characters (say, 30+) while you typically can't use more than about 10-12 of them in a single battle. As a result, you have to choose who to use and who to pass up. This effect is compounded by the fact that the games are very linear, and there are essentially a pre-determined number of enemies which you can defeat, and thus get experience from. In other words, you have to be careful how you distribute that experience. If you were to have a character kill a bunch of enemies and then never use that character ever again, you are essentially making all of your other characters worse by depriving them of experience. As a result, the practical response is to choose a party of characters to use, and then use them exclusively.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">This process is further complicated by the fact that, obviously, every character is different. When a character levels up they will have a certain percentile chance that each of their stats increase. So different characters have different growth rates, and while stat growth is ultimately random, some characters will pretty much always be better than others. This is ultimately the source of what I'm discussing here today. The issue I have is that, in more recent titles there really aren't any "bad" characters. Some characters will certainly still end up worse than others, but they will be mediocre at worst. They will be at least usable in the end game. Compare this to the earlier games, where some characters would just be terrible no matter what you did.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">So you would be forgiven for thinking that I'm crazy to see this change as a bad thing. Certainly the more modern model is much more user friendly. After all, there isn't really any indication which characters will end up being bad. In fact, the worst characters long term almost always have really good stats early on. So why punish a player for making a blind choice? It's a fair point, but hear me out. </span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">To me, bad characters are important because they add contrast. Choices are not interesting unless the possibility of making a bad one exists. There is no weight behind a choice if you win (or lose) regardless of which choice you made. It's like asking someone to pick between two boxes, one of which contains $10, the other containing $10.50. It doesn't make that big a difference which one you pick. You can bet you care which box you pick if one had $50 and the other had $5, though. Similarly, bad characters makes the good ones look that much better in contrast, and thus the player ultimately feels more attached to them. If every character is amazing, then none of them really stands out from the crowd, they all run the risk of becoming generic bad guy killers rather than characters you care about. If everyone is amazing, the no one is.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">So with all of this said, the question becomes: is it more important to create that divide between characters, or is it more important to create a more user friendly experience? There isn't really a good way to do both. You could try and include some indication as to how a character will turn out long term, but nobody in the right mind is going to choose the lesser character. If you know what is in each box, you are going to choose the one with $50 in it every time; it's not really a choice any more.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;"> As you may imagine, I lean towards all characters not being made equal. It's less friendly towards players who aren't already familiar with the game, but at the same time, that's where Fire Emblem came from. Long before the west even knew the series existed, Fire Emblem was about crushing difficulty. Maybe that formula doesn't really work when working on the the scale that Fire Emblem is today, but I feel like it would result in a better game, and I feel like it's a disservice to deviate so far from the series' roots.</span><br />
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<br />Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-908263949024801585.post-50483467883780169632013-05-21T15:30:00.004-04:002013-05-21T15:39:32.416-04:00Xbox One Reveal<span style="color: white;">Several months ago Sony revealed their vision of the future with their announcement of the Playstation 4. They talked a lot about semi-interesting social features, weird and wacky things that most people probably won't care about, and how much easier it will be for developers of all kinds to make games for their system. They also showed a decent amount of gameplay footage, real gameplay that was not pre-rendered, including footage from a brand new IP. At the time reactions to Sony's conference was mixed. Some people were optimistic, many were unimpressed. The conclusion that I think a lot of people came to was that we will wait and see what this all means for games.
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<span style="color: white;">Today Microsoft held their own conference, and I wanted to talk about my immediate thoughts. Full disclosure: I've owned every Sony console ever released, and none of the Microsoft consoles. While I'm not the Sony fanboy I once was, it would be naive to claim I didn't still have some bias.
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<span style="color: white;">Firstly on a superficial level; Microsoft actually showed their console. So we are fully aware now how sleek it is, and how much room it will take up on your shelf next to the equally large Kinect 2.0. Also, it's called the Xbox One. Why? I know laughing at console names has kind of become the thing to do these days, but still... Playstation 4 is safe, it's unimaginative. Xbox One is confusing and doesn't really seem to be based on anything. So what do we call the original Xbox now? The original Xbox? Xbox fat? XLBox? For that matter, what snappy name do we use for this new console? XOne? XBO? XBone? Yea, let's go with XBone. Anyways, I digress.
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<span style="color: white;">On the whole, I would say Microsoft's console started out strong--ish. Very quickly I got the impression of a console which transforms your living room. It acts as the gateway to all the media you need, and in this capacity it seems like an intriguing device. However at the same time, it's an embodiment of the ADD society we live in. Being able to instantly flip between media with a voice command is undoubtedly cool. However pressing the input button on my remote isn't particularly troublesome. Being able to open up a secondary application on the side of the screen is quite nifty. However if I'm going to control it with my phone, why not just run said application on my phone to begin with? Not to mention, how do all these media features function if I don't have cable? Or I don't have Xbox live gold? Or Netflix? Or... INTERNET.
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<span style="color: white;">After that whole shebang was out of the gate, Microsoft's conference took a real nosedive though. From that point there was little to see other than how awesome sports are, unrelated interviews with Athletes, a Halo TV series, a partnership with the NFL, and gameplay footage of the next (multiplatform) Call of Duty, which wasn't actually gameplay footage. The talk of actual video games was surprisingly minimal, even more so than was the case in Sony's conference. As a result of all of this, a lot of people are decrying the console as nothing but a media box aimed at fratboys and casuals. What's more, it has been <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/news/xbox-one-has-preowned-fee-6408671" target="new">confirmed </a>that there will be an activation fee for playing used games. Of course this also comes with the claim that users will be able to trade and sell games through the console, which is intriguing, but the used games thing seems to have caused enough rage that people don't read far enough to see the reselling games bit.
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<span style="color: white;">The immediate reaction to this reveal seems to be the internet freaking out, because their favorite console has turned into a media box aimed at frat boys. At first I was right there with this viewpoint, but I don't think I am any more. Sure, the demographic has changed so that I'm not a part of it any more. Dudebros and casuals probably make up the majority of the market these days, so it makes business sense to me. What does being a part of that demographic do for me, anyways? Why do I care if I'm being marketed towards? There will be video games right? Sure, we will certainly see what's up at E3. If anything the biggest problem here is that the demographic that watched this live presentation is likely the core gamers and not the dudebros. Now, the core gamers feel scorned. Sony's stock is apparently soaring, and a significant number of people are leaning towards the PS4 now.
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<span style="color: white;">In the end of the day, all I care about are the video games. Sure, Microsoft's presentation didn't do anything for me, but they have to sell their product. In today's market where virtually every title is multi-platform, it's exclusive titles that sell consoles, and I was promised 8 new exclusive IPs at E3. Features are cool. PS4 has features that are aimed at playing video games. XBone has features that are aimed at media consumption and general use. At this point we haven't an inkling as to which box will have the best library of games, and that is ultimately all I care about. Even in terms of usability and features, there is still a lot to be seen. Microsoft's conference was a small disaster, but this battle isn't done by a long shot. The internet just has to remember that the people watching the reveal live are not representative of the other billions of people on the planet.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">I do have to admit though. It's incredibly disappointing that the most interesting part of the entire presentation, the segment they used to cap off the entire thing, was about Call of Duty. Which, beyond just being Call of Duty, is a multi-platform title.</span>Rambling Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09020604724228143161noreply@blogger.com0