Arkham City-
I've been playing this one the last couple weeks (that says more about my gaming schedule than the actual length of the game). Overall, the game has some strong ideas, and of course, it was an ambitious idea to begin with. Still, when I play a game, I don't just compare it to other games. I think, is this game the best example of this thing it's trying to do that it could have been. I feel like some of Arkham City's flaws work against its full enjoyment.

Like you may have heard from corners of the internet (even avoiding reviews like I did), a lot of the generic street thugs say misogynistic things all of the time, like wanting to rape Catwoman or Harley Quinn or whomever. Now, sure, it's easy to imagine the criminal element thinking like that, but in games, you play that card too much and it just comes across as bad writing.

One of the flaws of the first game was its achievements for insane combat combos. It's like, you shouldn't be drawing attention to an element of the game that is more frustrating than entertaining. They continue that kind of stuff into Arkham City, even though I admit that combat is better and they have integrated more gadgets into it well.

In Arkham Asylum, you don't 'interact' with very many villains, but every villain there was done very well and even the way the game used peering into inmate's cells as a way to portray offscreen villains in a sinister light was quite inspired.

AC, in a way, has the same result of bad 'ensemble superhero' movies. Some villains barely have a punch, and it's sad to see some of the villains from AA show up but be less cool this time around.

So, in its favor, AC has cleaned up its controls some and there are some strong scenes. Still- and maybe it's only because AA won me over first- I'm inclined to think AA is the more-perfect example of Batman-in-gaming and would therefore recommend that to people who are interested in just playing one.

Metal Dead-
The other month, I had the pleasure of playing through Walk Thru Walls’ Metal Dead. First brought to my attention by the Gnomes Lair (www.gnomeslair.com), I picked it up when www.indievania.com was selling it as a $.99 special. It was included in the semi-recent “Bundle in a Box”, too.

So, the gist of it is that it’s a zombie apocalypse adventure game. Based on its genre, it has an unsurprising gore element, but that element is satisfyingly over-the-top. All in all, the game is just really charming. Any lackluster jokes are easily forgiven (which isn’t to say that there isn’t a lot of funny material there, too), and the characters are fun.

My main point of contention was one particular puzzle where I believe I tried the correct solution only to find out that it hadn’t previously worked because I hadn’t clicked on the right part of the object (despite all other actions tested on the two areas getting the same message). This resulted in at least an hour or two re-tracking my steps, thinking I had missed something. It’s possible that I’m wrong about the “two parts of the same object” thing, but I haven’t had the heart to go back and check it again.

Granted, the puzzles aren’t very complicated, so it should only take a couple of sittings to beat this game, but I have to say that I was really impressed with the pacing of the game. The main game is sizeable enough, but the way end game plays out really adds some bulk to the sense of length. The game progress design really worked well with the game’s location; it’ll be interesting to see if the makers will be able to balance out future games just as well.

This really was one of the better adventure games I’ve played in a while. It’s definitely worth the $4 (or cheaper) that various sites will charge you for it.

I want to get in the habit of writing mini reviews of games as I play them, so here's me starting with games I've played in the last handful of months.

LA Noire - I paid $8 for LA Noire from gamefly.com (public service announcement: even if you dont rent games from gamefly, they sell used games at pretty good prices. So far, every game I’ve gotten from them has been in pretty good shape.). I hate to say it, but the critics of this game were right. This game is a mess of issues. In no particular order:
1. Having to move the joystick around to find the “sweet spot” just so the protagonist can look at the back of a matchbox.
2. Reloading cases takes so long that, for the sake of seeing the rest of the game, I was forced to play with a walkthrough in hand.
3. For a game that had me install 18 gigs of space to my hard drive, I should not have had to switch discs nearly as much.
4. Interrogations are largely unintuitive.
5. Fairly terrible plot. Things ripped off of movies like Chinatown are done in a mostly unclever way.
6. The world doesn’t feel nearly as interactive and alive as, say, Mafia 2, another era piece, so the game feels mostly bloated.

The one nice thing I’ll say about the game is that there were times where I was just grinding, doing street cases or whatever, the game was easier to pick up and play than the games I am playing right now, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Red Faction: Armageddon.

Originally, I was going to tell people that they should avoid the game and maybe just pick up the soundtrack if they happened to dig noir soundtracks. Eventually, I learned that none of the available soundtracks even have my favorite theme from the game, so because of that BS, I’d advise people just to avoid this crap.

Comic Jumper (xbox 360) - Twisted Pixel Entertainment, to me, feels kind of like the current Shiny Entertainment, a company that specializes in pushing boundaries, often with a fair amount of injected humor. That said, I don’t think Twisted Pixel games have the same amount of polish. Parts of Comic Jumper are great, like seeing you’re about to jump into a comic book genre you find particularly entertaining. Other parts aren’t so great. The controls can be a bit unintuitive, and there are super-unfunny anti-feminism jokes which greatly harm whatever goodwill has been built up. Granted, the jokes are pretty harmless in that they seem to be trying to cater to some 12-year old mentality... I’m all for trying to please one’s inner 12-year old, but even our inner 12-year olds can aspire to loftier ideals. I have to give the game credit for making me stick through it despite being not one of my favorite types of game (shooter / brawler), but I think Twisted Pixel has a ways to go before they reach brilliance.

Back to the Future (Telltale Games) - Telltale Games, one of the few modern companies that can do adventure games right, has been picking up more and more intellectual properties. I enjoy the original movies enough, sure, but wasn’t sure how that enthusiasm would play out in adventure game form. To be honest, it took me several attempts to make much headway into the first episode out of sheer apathy. When I did pick up some momentum, though, and get into the series, I was pleasantly surprised. Overall, I found it quite engaging. There are even some points in the middle of the series that I thought were as touching (or more) than any in the original films. Sadly, the last episode of the series is pretty disappointing and ends on a flat note, making it harder to recommend. Still, while not the perfect companion piece to an original (like the Wallace & Gromit games are to their shorts) , I guess I could recommend it to people looking for a distraction but who aren’t too worried about consistency.

Jurassic Park (Telltale Games) - Telltale’s Jurassic Park game takes the gamble of being mostly comprised of “quick time events”- you know, the annoying thing where you have to hit “right bumper” when it pops up on the screen (or “X” or “Y” and everything else). Surprisingly, this isn’t completely horrible and does sort of work with the intensity of the game. The action is even broken up from time to time, allowing the player to relax and solve a puzzle. Unfortunately, again, the twists in the game’s ending are the weakest part of the plot. Paired with that is that the fact that once beaten, you’re not going to find yourself wanting to sit back and grind perfect scores on the levels since there really is no way to relax and do QTEs. These two things make the game hard to recommend even though several other aspects are well done.

Sanitarium - I picked up Sanitarium at Good Old Games (gog.com) for $4 sometime last year (it’s now $10, but hey, maybe it’ll go on sale again one day). Anyhow, I finally got around to playing it recently, and I have to say I was impressed. As much as I like the “adventure game” genre, I still have to admit that very few are both compelling and designed well-enough that I would recommend them to the average person. Without thinking too hard about it, I’d guess there was less than five.

Unexpectedly, this obscure (I’ll call it obscure because I don’t remember it) adventure from the late 90s would make the list. Sure, it has its flaws. The way people look in the cutscenes is kind of “uncanny valley.” Initially, the game seems to go for that shock factor popular in 90s horror adventure games like Harvester or Phantasmagoria. There’s kind of a dumb maze near the end and a couple levels are susceptible to find-the-pixel type problems (although none stumped me for too long).

Still, the voice acting is generally good, and there’s some quality narrative that keeps the player engaged. Not only that, but some levels are amazingly artistic (in a conceptual sense), pulling narrative tricks that I wouldn’t expect to see in a game until at least 5-10 years later. I suggest anyone who likes adventure games check it out sometime.

PC gamers who don't have it might be interested to know that Mafia and Mafia 2 are on sale TODAY on Steam ($2.50 and $7.50, respectively).

Heh, nice soundtracks.

I forgot to mention that Mafia 2 is also the only game I ever expect to play where you have to beat up three guys in a prison shower room to avoid being, um, you know (yeah, that's a spoiler, but it's such a ridiculous videogame situation that I'd expect anyone to appreciate it anyways).

Also, I do have to say that the DLC forced me to figure out some aspects of the game that I had somehow managed to missed during my playthrough.

Anyhow, the main intent of my review was that people who might otherwise dismiss it might give it a shot, but in case I didn't emphasize that enough, see, Aardvark likes it!

the Mafia 2 sniper method of robbing a gun store



That's weird, it wont embed the videos. Well now I'm going to EDIT them and make them urls



THE
JUST ONE MORE CLICK
AARDVARK

Mafia 2 mayhem

I tried to line up the music with the video. Sort of like the Pink Floyd/ Wizard of Oz thing....only with DEATH!



THE
UNDERSCORE
AARDVARK

In honor of this place going belly-up before the year is out, I am bringing this thread back from the dead. Now that I don't have to worry about any posters showing up to disagree with anything I've said, it is right time to chronicle my thoughts on the games I am playing.

First off, Mafia 2(!!!)-
(The original game is covered here)

I enjoyed the first Mafia game, for all its frustrations and flaws. Despite those things, the score and graphics (for its time) helped make it seem like were playing an event.

Initially, the trailers for the sequel intrigued me. I thought they looked fantastic. Then I started reading articles about Playboy collectible tie-ins, and I tried the eventual demo on the 360 (since the first game, I have moved over to mainly-console gaming) and found it lacking. I decided not to get it, and reviews from friends validated that decision.

Fast forward many months to "a couple weeks ago" where I found myself looking at a Mafia 2 Game of the Year edition at Target, priced at $20. I figured, as mediocre as the game probably is, $20 (with all of that DLC) is a pretty good price for mediocrity.

All in all, I'd say that was a good call.

The game does do some things right. While the first game's protagonist was a basically-good-guy who gets seduced by the Mafioso lifestyle (and whose tragic downfall is the result of good decisions), the protagonist in Mafia 2 is not burdened with the same sense of morals and, pleasantly, is not destined for a cookie-cutter ending. In fact, to both its strength and detriment, there are unexplored (and misleading) plot elements, probably due to the fact that the game originally was supposed to have four different endings. The resulting plot, while not perfect, is also something that you can't completely put your finger on and is somewhat better for it.

Still with us are the ponderous commutes to and during almost every mission. At least through some of this, characters talk and the game uses this time to develop things, and I found this to be a sort of nice change of pace from the games I've played lately. Also, the game takes place later than the first game, so cars are faster.

I can't say if if's the same way with the pc version, but the 360 version cops (and reactions to things like speeding) are way more forgiving than in the first game. One gets the feeling that they are dumbing things down for the console market, but maybe that's not a bad thing.

Unfortunately, among the dumbed down things are the guns. The inaccuracy with a gamepad is extremely frustrating when compared to 360 games that handle gamepad aiming much better, and instead of doing scoped weapons properly, they have a crappy non-zoom thing that mainly frustrates.

The first game had some particularly memorable missions, like a sniper mission and a riverboat one (can't remember if they were the same mission). This second one doesn't reach the same the heights, but it does get more imaginative with some of the DLC.

The DLC sort of brings back the feel of the post-main-game Free Ride (or whatever) mode of the original. Loosely connected missions that, once completed, can be played as many times in whatever order you'd like. Some of these missions bring back the head-bashing frustration associated with the first one, admittedly.

As far as the Playboy magazines go, sure, when I heard about them, I thought it was pretty annoying product placement. Playing the game, though, I have to admit that I do not hate boobs in games. This gets a pass.

Concerning the 360 version itself, graphically, I found the game just fine. It wasn't until Joe's Adventures, the third DLC, that things like magically-appearing-objects-as-you-get-closer-to-them really was noticeable. While there would be some novelty to playing the game on a nice pc, the affordability of the 360 (and presumably, the PS3 version) is more important.

Final thoughts- Mafia 2 is lacking in some areas to the extent that I can understand the frustration of the early adopters. Even now, I'd recommend avoiding the pc version, as they are still selling the DLC for more than it's worth. Just the same, I'd give the thumbs-up to console owners. It won't be the best game you play all year, but it's a great distraction and is the perfect thing for when you just want to swim in a new world (or sandbox) for a while.

Bought Max Payne 2 yesterday, and I just beat it now. Anyway, I only really enjoyed one level in the whole game; I don't recommend it.

"That's a good fssshhhaaaucking milkshake!" -- J. Travolta, _Pulp Fiction_

Disco leads to scientology?

Guess it really is the root of all evil.

Hey, disco made me what I am today, and don't you forget it.

><

Jethro Q. Walrustitty wrote:Shut up, Barry Manilow.

=(


The disco halls must hold no fun for you.

Shut up, Barry Manilow.

And, MDK (and, MDK 2 possibly even more so) fucking RULES. Talk shit about Shiny all you want, but they fucking delivered in that game. And the sequel, which feels sort of like three games since you play as three different characters, and some are better than others, but it sure ain't boring.

Remember, before MDK, sniper rifles were virtually unheard of in modern gaming. PAY YOUR DUES, BITCHES.

At the moment, I'm trying to finish one game before starting another, for a number of reasons, but a big one being that (even with 240+ gigs of storage) games take up a shitload of room nowadays, and don't want to tie up a bunch of space with ten half-finished games. (Though, I do have a "game saves" directory with tons of RARs of game saves from various abandoned games.)

Working on beating Halo at the moment, but the sheer repetition is fucking killing me, and taking a lot of the fun out. If I don't get a vehicle to drive soon, I might just delete the fucking thing and move on to Max Payne 2.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:Well, of course, there's the fact that we're not the young kids we once were...

Ah, but those were the days, weren't they, Roody? When the doors of perception were cleansed and we saw things how they truly were -- infinite? Do you remember, Roody? Those times, those games, those conversations, those discussions. Do you remember when we used to dance? And incidents arose from circumstance? One thing led to another, we were young -- and we would scream together songs unsung?

Well, of course, there's the fact that we're not the young kids we once were, where spending weeks on a game seems like a reasonable idea. Despite how much we enjoy certain aspects of a game, if the mechanics of actually playing it aren't
completely engaging, it's just much to easy to put it aside with the intent to get back to it one day.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:A couple weeks ago, my brother was replaying through Final Fantasy Tactics a third time, and I figured it'd be good to try to turn him onto Fallout Tactics.

A few friends had recommended FF Tactics, but I found the game to be very shallow when compared to the original X-COM. I didn't get very far with it, so for all I know it really gets deep and it really has a lot more combat options later on, but if a game doesn't grab me at the start I stop playing.

(Actually, even if they do I stop playing, usually. I remember spending a bunch of nights in the middle of the summer a couple years back playing Half-Life and I was enjoying the hell out of it. Then, I missed a few nights, stopped playing and haven't been back. It's a great game. It scared the hell out of me. It was very compelling? Why did I suddenly stop playing it and/or get bored with it?)

Alright, I haven't touched Sacrifice since I ordered and received the strategy guide weeks ago, but here I am to talk about my other gaming exploits. A couple weeks ago, my brother was replaying through Final Fantasy Tactics a third time, and I figured it'd be good to try to turn him onto Fallout Tactics. Even though I had never successfully gotten into any of the Fallout games, I figured that Fallout Tactics has to be better than one of those Japanese rpgs, as even the best ones are annoyingly dumbed down for children and are usually hampered by language and culture translation. I also thought it'd be a good investment, just in case the Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel action game turns out to be good fun.

Anyway, finding the tactics game ended up requiring a visit to Interplay's website, as it was no longer available at the other online stores I tried and my local Gamestop whose selection is going to crap. The plus side of this was that Interplay is selling it for $5. Despite the fact that Brian Fargo is no longer there, they're still doing things like that which endears myself to them. Too many companies seem to throw away old stock instead of offering them for bargain prices. After my pleasant experience with Sacrifice, I thought I'd give some more Shiny games a try and also picked up both MDK games for $10.

The MDK discs were in one of those dual-jewelcase packages, although a free mouse pad was included. The Fallout game was the full original box, which was nice.

I haven't given the Fallout game a try yet, as I thought I should play through the earlier games first (and my brother has to wait until he gets a better computer before he'll be able to play it) so I started off playing MDK.

Despite how much all the reviews I read raved about the configurability of the controls, it still took a bit of fiddling before I found a control scheme that I could use (it ended up being similar to how I played Mafia, where I switched between gamepad and keyboard as needed). I still found the game instantly charming and pretty addictive. At normal difficulty, levels weren't especially hard except for parts where just figuring out what to do is a puzzle and since the levels are timed, this sometimes resulted in having to start from the beginning of the level a fair amount. Although clever and doing some neat technical things for the time that it was released (including a bullet eye-view when firing weapons in sniper mode, which is especially entertaining when you fire a mortar that bounces around a fair amount), it is still very fluffy. One can see why it did fairly well on consoles (I believe).

The ending is pretty anti-climatic, and the overall story isn't very important. The end result, for me, made the game feel king of like an early Apogee game on steroids. Like almost every other Shiny Entertainment game I've played, it's very creative and one only wishes he were there in the game design meetings to help push it that 10% further and make it into a perfect game. As it is, the flaws in these games are that much more disappointing and make the gaming experience that much more unfullfilling.

Even though I had a good deal of fun with the game and it was quite addictive, I wouldn't go out and recommend it to anyone because of the nagging flaws. Although I beat the first one, I have yet to start the second one for these same reasons.

After that, I thought I'd give the first Fallout another try. After two or three unsuccessful starts, I finally created a decent enough character and successfully triggered a quest (to rescue Tandi) that had been eluding me up until that point. After that hump, the rest of the game was much smoother, although there was plenty of restoring constantly in difficult battles (partly because I let Ian die in his first fight) and several parts where I had to restore because some character had moved and trapped me (yeah, this is fixed in the second game).

The game was fun, yeah, but overall, it felt sort of like a flawed Fallacy of Dawn. FoD's only disappointment was that there wasn't a handful more missions to let you play the game for that many more hours (but completely understandable given the difficulty of writing a big text game alone) while Fallout has references to unimplemented quests and in ways feels like a jumble of ideas that aren't completely self-contained. I kind of blame the way skills and such is handled. Of course, earlier this year, I think I said something about how I wondered if I would ever be able to play a game where you choose your own stats again (as I haven't really enjoyed that since 80s rpgs, where you keep on creating characters until you get a good roll and all that). While I think having gameplay based on chosen skills is a nice ideal, I just wonder if it keeps the product from feeling polished as the designers try to both make it so that the game isn't so picky that a player misses the majority of quests and perks and that it may help turn the quest-creation process into a confusing bog of ideas that are more likely to be semi-implemented as they were. So yeah, it felt like playing a good text game which aspires higher than its own capabilities.

The same thing can be said of Fallout 2 so far, although I'm having a harder time maintaining a decent character. After several all-nighters, I've given the game a rest and left it at my parents' where I was housesitting all week. The last several hours of gameplay have been spent wandering around after beating most of the important quests in Vault City, hoping to level up to a point that I may have a chance against that raider camp. I thought the lack of wandering around powering up was one of the reasons modern crpgs are supposed to be better than console-styled games.

My prediction is that I'm going to enjoy playing through the rest of the game and the other ones a fair amount but I won't consider them a holy grail of gaming that I'll feel the need to direct my siblings and friends to. Hopefully, this experience will allow me to get into Planescape: Torment and I'll like it as much as the people that recommend it to me.

I just started Sacrifice tonight. I can't say I'm very good at these games so I don't think I'll get very far, but I have to say, I'm pretty impressed. I've never been interested in RTSs (mainly because every time I dabbled in one, I'd get my ass kicked), but this one is interesting on a couple levels. The graphics and music are pretty impressive, but what's really got me is the story and voice work and general fun of it. For each mission, you can choose to help out one of five battling gods, ranging from the nature-ific peace goddess to the destruction-loving bad boy. As you get a couple levels in, though, options of gods to serve become limited as you burn your bridges with this one or that one.

That doesn't necessarily sound inherently fantastic; I'm sure that description isn't why I bought the game in the first place (it was mainly because of a dying loyalty to Interplay and the fact that the demo for it that came with Messiah seemed pretty decent), but I have to say that the element is executed a lot better than I imagined. Ideally, I'd like to beat the game then play it again to catch some of the other angles.

Of course, what will probably happen is that I'll just give up at some point then work on coercing my younger brother (who is much better at these games) into playing it for me.

I'm pretty sure you can get it for $10 at stores that have pretty decent bargain bin selections, so I'd recommend it to anyone who might be interested.