Final Frontier Edition
I guess I was in a space-faring mood this week as my principal play time was spent in the voids of Dead Space and Puzzle Quest: Galactrix. But the truth is there wasn’t a lot of gaming happening overall, what with a busy weekend and some inexplicable exhaustion that had me retiring for bed early rather than staying up and playing games as is my typical regimen.
Plus, you know, hockey playoffs.
You may note that I actually completed Dead Space last week and sort of intended to just fiddle with it a bit more until I got bored and moved on, but suddenly the week is over and despite not much play time I find myself on the second to the last chapter of Round 2. I don’t know when you reach the point at which you can stop qualifying yourself and have to admit that something has changed: I think of myself as the kind of gamer who doesn’t stick with games long and rarely replays anything. Maybe it’s just the achievements system, maybe it’s that this generation of games has just managed to capture what I love about them but I’ve replayed more titles in the last three years than I think I had in my entire life to that point. I have games sitting on my shelf that I own still with the express intent to replay them again.
This is unprecedented.
But then again, it does feel like my approach to games is undergoing a bit of a transformation. My patience for games is thinner, as I discuss in this week’s Lock’s Quest review, but my interest in games that I enjoy is equivalently enriched. I think it may have come from realizing that I had blown through a lot of games in the previous decade that I could no longer recall much about except that I had enjoyed them. Rather than treating my beloved experiences in games in as disposable a manner as games I played only as mindless entertainment, I think I’ve begun to relish games that speak to me at a level above that of “diversion.”
- Dead Space
One of the things I like about Dead Space is that unlike, for example, the original Resident Evil, the tasks you undertake are at least plausible. You’re not unlocking doors by attaching a golden arrow to a statue and then turning it around on a pedestal four times or whatever. For the most part things in Dead Space feel realistic… or as realistic as you can get in a game about space zombies. I admit the Store is a concession as is the fact that these zombies tend to drop ammunition but never carry guns of their own, but compared to something like BioShock’s hacking mini-game or even the presence of it’s Vita-chambers and plasmid vending machines, there is an appreciated nod to authenticity.
The point at which I knew Dead Space had elevated in my mind beyond something that was just fun and into something I really liked was actually not when I found myself playing through the game earnestly a second time in as many weeks. The thing that cemented Dead Space in my mind as a great game was when I was fiddling with the flame thrower in zero-G and discovered that I was disappointed that the fire didn’t act differently without gravity. So I thought, “Well, they screwed up the flame thrower. I bet it even works in a vacuum.” So I took it out the next time I was without atmosphere and tried to fire it. It blinked red and refused to respond. No lengthy explanation, no workaround. No oxygen, no fire. Sorry. What this says to me is that Dead Space is a game that understands detail. You can see it when you look around a bit and note that things you would expect to have warning labels on them do in fact have labels. It’s in the way the sound muffles when you’re in a vacuum or in the way they took the time to actually model enough geometry for the floors you don’t visit so you can see them whizzing by when the elevator is moving.
I also like that while the game itself has a definite vocabulary, which I referred to last week, in that you typically face one of maybe a dozen different enemy types and you can typically see where they will be coming from as if they left a gang tag on the wall in hot pink paint. However, they do mix it up occasionally as most games do. The trap a lot of these “novel” sections in other games fall into is that they’re way overused: Something can be fun and interesting a couple of times if it isn’t the core of a game, but—going back to BioShock’s Pipe Dream hacking clone—if it happens over and over again it starts to just get really tedious and dull. There are a few sections in Dead Space, such as the Asteroid Defense Systems and the coiling tentacle that tries to drag you into a very small hole that pop up just often enough to be significant and memorable without becoming a crutch the designers used to break up the monotony of shooting zombies. Even with things like vacuum areas and zero gravity, they are definitely present throughout the game, but not overused. It’s hard not to appreciate it when you spend so much time saying things like “I wish this game had done it this way or I wish they had cut that or added this other thing.”
When my criticisms start getting to the point of ridiculous nitpick like I wish that the enemy models were all unique enough so they seemed like they could have come from a unique human host originally or I wish they had included a few more sequences like the fast-moving vertical lift which has you speeding through a tunnel and you just know something is going to attack you but for once in the game it just doesn’t. The more specific my gripes, the better the developers have done. Consider it my highest kudos. - Puzzle Quest: Galactrix
Galactrix came late in the week so there isn’t as much for me to say about it as I’d like, but I did put a solid few hours into it here and there. I think the first thing that needs to be said is that I wish this game was available for the PSP. The same crappy limitations that plagued the DS incarnation of Challenge of the Warlords (gah, what an awkward title/subtitle that thing is) persist here: Stylus-only controls, miserable graphics and now it even features the worst part of the PSP Warlords version: Load times! Seriously?
According to this blurb on MTV’s Multiplayer site, D3 may still decide to publish the game on PSP, it just wasn’t a lead drop. Now Warlords hit on PSP and DS first, followed later by every platform known to man, so it’s possible. But I want to play the game and I want to do it handheld so it looks like this is my sole option for now. If it ever does hit the PSP, I’ll be first in line to trade this in for what can only be an improvement.
The good news is that aside from the interface design and some other developmental annoyances, the game itself is quite enjoyable. I’m not sure if I can say yet that I like it better than Warlords; it’s different enough in the primary puzzle sections that I’m still not “used” to it, but the RPG elements are very familiar feeling overall. Even the semi-corny story and dialogue is comfortably campy.
I’m also happy to see the excision of the awkward class system from Warlords: Since the only real difference was skill advancement and starting strengths and most characters ended up being pretty similar after all the spells were learned and artifacts created, I think it was unnecessary. In Galactrix you have one skill point for each attribute increase and it works just fine.
Generally speaking I’m glad to have something “Puzzle Quest” that is new and different since after a couple of years of Warlords on and off it kind of starts to feel like a grind, but my limited Space PQ exposure to date prevents me from putting a complete synopsis together. If history serves, there will be ample time for that. - Lock’s Quest
I mentioned last week that I had discovered the multiplayer (or actually just versus since it’s two-player only) mode in this game and it had given the title a new lease on life in my collection. So I played it during the week. A lot. The conclusion I was able to come to is that the more I play Lock’s Quest, the less I like it.
Let’s talk for a second about the controls. One thing that I thought The Phantom Hourglass did well was that it made sure, since your only input mechanism was the stylus, that you had as little interference with your vantage point and targeting as possible. Lock’s Quest, on the other hand, is constantly throwing things into your line of sight and making it impossible to see, much less target, something you need to interact with. Or a place you need to go to. Or an enemy you need to attack. I appreciate what they’re trying to do with the game in terms of re-imagining RTS games for a different platform (in fact I wish proper console RTS games like Halo Wars would do a bit more of this kind of thing rather than continually trying to iterate the control schemes into something approximately PC-like without benefit of the speed of a mouse), but the game is way too married to it’s own design to really work.
It’s like this: If you have an isometric view of a field, and you have terrain height, you absolutely must provide either rotation or make that terrain irrelevant to the mechanical aspects of play. The passing nod to usability that is inconsistently greying or setting walls transluscent isn’t sufficient. Meanwhile you have those same walls serve as key target points (when they’ve been set by the user as fortifications) and you have their components fail to merge into one selectable whole, so if you want to repair a wall you have to try to select not just The Wall, but the individual piece of wall you set up earlier during the build phase, even if it is partially or completely hidden behind another wall or bit of the map. Then you add in things like terrain markers that can’t be built upon but do allow passage by enemy units which create instant weak points in your fortifications and impenetrable controls unless you’ve advanced through the single player game… it’s just a mess.
I grant you I’m not very good at the Versus Mode in Lock’s Quest which may have something to do with why it annoys me so much. But I’m not usually the kind of person who has to win a game to have a good time. The thing is, when I lose and feel like part of my defeat can be directly attributed to flaws in the design and interface of the game, my patience evaporates. - Bangai-O
Okay, so it’s a Treasure game. These are the people who created Ikaruga and they’re kind of known for pushing hardware to it’s absolute limit with how much stuff they can cram on the screen at once. Basically Bangai-O is an action puzzle game in which you control a mech with an arsenal of weapons at your disposal and you’re thrown into these levels where your foes are turrets and… other robots, I guess. It’s not always clear what’s going on but what is apparent is that there is a lot of it.
The actual entirety of the game is a 17-level tutorial plus a set of developer-designed levels and an editor. That’s it. Now, on one hand I like the simplicity and forward-thinking aspect of a DS game that is basically the precursor to Little Big Planet. And the tutorial mode is executed with some amusing cutscenes that are basically non-sequiturs with funky Anime characters and self-referential, self-deprecating humor. The problem to me is twofold: One, the game is way too complicated. The fact that there are 17 tutorial missions which take about 30-45 minutes to complete depending on how well you grasp the game’s intent says one thing. That the last two tutorials are sketchy and cover too much ground, even going so far as to say “If you want to figure it out, you’re better off just trying a few times until something makes sense,” says something else. That Bangai-O uses all six of the buttons on the DS plus has to map functions to multi-button presses says at some point the designers needed to step back and say “I don’t think we need all this in the game.”
There is an interesting missile system that uses the shoulder buttons and involves them charging up, using different aspects like bounce and homing and responding to oncoming fire. By itself it takes three or four training missions to explain the missiles and they could easily have been the basis of the entire game. It’s rich enough, it’s fun to do, it offers a wealth of action-puzzle-solving possibilities. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg followed by your cannon fire, melee attacks, charge abilities, counters, movement, setting, environmental considerations, shields, weapon type mixing and I’m sure a couple dozen other systems I’m forgetting. Am I crazy to think this is unnecessary?
The other thing is that I wish they had gone ahead and created even a bare-bones campaign mode. I don’t think they had to do much more than give a silly set of reasons why you need to keep fighting these puzzles and then have the characters they created riff on it between levels, but to make a game that has no progression and is basically just a toolkit seems… not lazy exactly… I don’t know; to me it just feels incomplete. I completed the tutorials and had fun for half an hour and then I tried a few of the pre-sets and got spanked because I didn’t have enough of a slope to prepare me for a full-on, incorporate-everything sort of level. I liked Bangai-O for what I got out of it, but those 30 minutes aren’t going to leave much of a lasting impression and I can’t imagine ever wanting to pick this up again. - Taboo
I love playing games. This is probably obvious. And I love playing games with all sorts of people. But to me there is a difference between the sort of implored activity that games sometimes represent (especially when teenagers are involved) and the voluntary experiences I have consistently with my friends. I think one reason why party games, like Taboo, don’t appeal to me as much is that often there is a sort of foot-dragging involved with some participants which makes for a less than ideal session.
I don’t know how to say this without sounding snooty, but I believe part of why I prefer games that have a certain density to them is that they are principally accessible by people who share a love for games that matches my own. Therefore, I’m never going to have to play Arkham Horror or Necromunda or Talisman against someone who was just playing because Mom said they needed to be involved in the family activity.
Taboo is one of those “word charades” game where you have to get team members to guess something while your time or descriptors are limited. Outburst and Catch Phrase are similar titles. My issue with these games usually comes down to the fact that no one seems able to use common sense to determine what is valid and what isn’t. To me, the idea of being able to rhyme a word your team is trying to guess is opposed to the spirit of the game. “It sounds like driptoe!” is hardly a challenge and since I didn’t see the words “Banana Fana” on the box anywhere, I’m not sure how that strikes anyone as valid. Meanwhile there are the people who are either readily forgiving of word forms (considering “Walk” an acceptable answer for “Walking”) or people who are nazis about it (“No, they guessed ‘telephones’ but the word was ‘phone’!”) and of course the homynym debate (“Is guessing ‘Pain’ an acceptable answer for ‘Pane’?”) all of which is sort of annoying for me when the rules usually boil down to “if you have to ask if it’s legal, it probably isn’t” and “whatever keeps the game moving along is fine.”
I suppose if it seemed like more people had just a slightly higher tolerance for rules-readings I’d care less, but when people want to be given the Elevator Pitch of the Executive Summary of the Overview version of the rules and then complain when they get called on a questionable tactic saying “Well no one told me that wasn’t legal!” I kind of grind my teeth and wish I could click my heels and drop into a nice game of Space Hulk. As snooty as that may be.
What it comes down to is that I want to play games with people who want to play games. I think that sometimes people concede to games with me because they think that will make me happy and while the sentiment is truly appreciated, I haven’t quite figured out a way to tell them that if they’re just doing it to humor me, we can spare each other and find another activity we’ll both enjoy. - Block Mania
As I suspected, playing Block Mania through to the final phase in which the Judges arrive and you can no longer summon Blockers changes the dynamic of the game significantly. For one thing, the introduction of the Defeat Points, which we never got to last week, alters the way you look at your Command Point actions. For example, we realized last week that if you had no Blockers, you found yourself with very little to do on your turn. Last week I drew several of the Reinforcements cards which give you two free Blockers each and everyone thought those cards were super valuable. I drew a couple more in this week’s game but what we discovered is that at the end of the game each defeated Blocker is worth one Defeat Point; since all Blockers have to be wiped off the board for the game to end, Blockers themselves can be considered a necessary Defeat Point. But we had gotten used to the idea that the more Blockers you can cram onto the board the better off you’d be, so suddenly we were re-evaluating that and deciding that what is the most valuable is taking full advantage of each Blocker and causing as much mayhem as possible with as few units as you can get by with.
Along those same lines, we spent a lot of both games doing Blocker-to-Blocker combat, trying to thin our opponent’s forces. But in truth you never need to invade another Block with the sole intention of attacking their Blockers. If you’re doing that, you’re potentially wasting your token because you should either be targeting the Block itself or defending back in your home Block.
It also took us a while to understand the benefit of the Defensive Shooting phase which, if you set up with a heavy weapon in your own windows, allows you to take pot shots at the enemy Block from the relative safety of your own. It was through this method that I was able to inflict most of my damage, although my friends had a lot of success sending in a Blocker armed with a Vibro-Drill.
My favorite mechanic in the game is the collapse system which has each collapsed space in a Block potentially causing a chain reaction of collapses. We never even got to this point in the previous game (well, not really) so to say that the basic movement and combat is fun is true, but then when you figure out the real strategy it gets even better and once the mayhem begins it reaches an impressive pinnacle of enjoyment. It’s really just a fantastic game.
If I had one complaint it would be that the Judge phase at the end is kind of flappy and cheap: Essentially you control both the collective Judges as well as your Blockers but often you’re put into a position where the Judges are attacking your own Blockers by virtue of some questionably logical prioritizing… it sort of feels like the final phase of the game could have been handled by an entirely new mechanic such as having each player lose a progressive number of Blockers each round (their choice or you could even use the priority system) but any space those Blockers are in are automatically collapsed (i.e. the Judges aren’t too picky about how accurate their fire is and don’t mind a little collateral damage) but the Judges also kill the power so movement is hampered somewhat (there are already rules for knocking out the power in the game). I’m not exactly sure about the specifics, but just something other than cranking up the annoyance factor while still clinging to the main game’s CP structure would help it not feel sort of anticlimactic.
All in all though I really enjoyed the game and it’s the kind of thing where the presentation isn’t fantastic but as soon as we were done we started talking excitedly about the possibilities the game opened up for modeling and minis projects. As I drove home I daydreamed about vertical board models and Judge Dredd minis with hanging SkyRails and rubble markers for collapsed squares. I doubt it will ever happen, but any game that gets my wheels spinning like that has got to be doing something right.
Parting Shot
The first note here is that my free deck of Magic: The Gathering cards arrived. Apparently the way they did it was to build simple 40-card decks from each color and randomly package two into every shipment box. Mine ended up being White and Blue. The cards are mostly common and basic land with two uncommons each (I guess you can’t complain about the lack of rares considering the price tag) and primarily from 10th Edition although a few are from recent expansion blocks.
I have to say this is a pretty genius promotion not necessarily because it inspires me in particular to get back to the comic shop and start buying more cards but because as a representative of the extremely casual Magic player who has lapsed into the habit of not buying more cards, little jolts like these underline the crack cocaine model of customer retention. To a certain degree the addictiveness of a product is always a key directive with corporate management, but the genius of MtG is that each iteration, each low level item on the inventory list (in this case a particular card) represents at the very least a potential for subsequent demand enhancement. Since Magic cards are by design most effective in conjunct with each other, the more cards you get into players hands, and the more information those players have about the other available cards, the more they want to try to find a) the complimentary additions to their decks/collections and b) other as-yet-unknown cards to make the combination that much more effective. Sometimes it only takes that one score in some random booster pack and you start daydreaming about bizarre deck ideas. A few clicks on The Gatherer later and you have a wishlist a mile long. Whether you choose to go the individual card purchase route or scour boxes of boosters and starter decks to find what you need, it’s all win for Wizards of the Coast. If they have to give up a few thousand skimpy boxes of them to snare several hundred new deck constructors, well, they were going to print them anyway.
As they say, the first hit is always free.
The other thing I wanted to mention is that just before this post was completed I wrapped up my second play through of Dead Space. I currently have 725 of 1,o00 points in the game’s achievements and I should mention that the Maxed Out achievement is no joke. I upgraded stuff quite a bit on my first pass but I never really bothered to make sure I got as many power nodes as I could possibly manage. Seeing how much progress I’d made, when I finished the game I figured, “One more pass ought to do it.” Uh-uh. In Round 2 I never opened a single node-activated door, I sold almost everything I picked up except for ammo to earn purchasing power for extra nodes and I collected what I think are all the ones in the blue boxes scattered around the game. I managed to finish upgrading all but one gun. In two complete play throughs. Now, I think that means I can probably finish up the achievement by the end of Chapter 3 on Round 3, but it kind of kills me that because of a mistake I made early on in my second pass if I want all the achievements (and I kind of don’t… beating the game on Impossible sounds not so fun) I have to beat the game no fewer than four times. The reason is that I messed up and used my carryover guns early in Round 2 which eliminated me from the One Gun achievement. Since I’m basically committed to finishing Maxed Out now that I’ve played through the game for 22 hours just to get it (okay, so I actually had fun playing the second time, too, but that’s not the point) I will end up playing much more than I anticipated, regardless of how many of these last few I decide to try and get.
I have Gears of War 2 supposedly on the way from Goozex this week, if it has even as much appeal as the original did (I liked Gears, I didn’t love it) I’ll probably call it a day on Dead Space. If GoW2 ends up disappointing I’m not necessarily discounting the idea of a third run with just the Plasma Cutter.
All of which just goes back to what I was saying about the way I’m suddenly replaying more games: I do feel like my acheivement fever is still cooled from it’s peak a year or two ago, but I’m using them now not as a means of growing my silly score but as a sort of meta-game to extend the life of something that I liked but didn’t in itself have narrative longevity to get me to the point where I’m “done” with it. It’s almost becoming a record-keeping measure where I look back on the list and recall the ups and downs of this generation. What I find a little unexpected though is that I discover I long for a unified meta-system: PS3’s Trophies don’t hold the same appeal to me as 360 Achievements, possibly as a mere virtue of the fact that I’ve played more games on the 360 and with it’s system. Case in point, I was going to play Mirror’s Edge again (on PS3, where I played it the first time) but I decided to list it on Goozex quickly instead to recoup my points, re-acquire it when it drops in value only pick up the 360 version this time so I can have a record of it alongside my other triumphs. There isn’t a lot of mystery as to the origin of this phenomena: Xbox’s online and community structures matter. If I have friends out there who own PS3s, I don’t know about it and the relevance of that fact is indistinguishable from nil.