The Dark Side Edition
Before we get started this week, I need to bring your attention to a site: The Tunnels of Doom Tribute Page. Affirmative.
Anyway.
I acquired a means of emulating software on my DS this week. Among other things this will afford me a chance to have the device I’ve long craved which is a portable emulator not bound by the commercial confines of re-releases. Rather than waiting for someone to finally put out a DS version of Shadowrun for the SNES, for example, I can simply emulate it directly from the original cart’s ROM. This is acceptable to me.
In completely unrelated news, I also had the opportunity to try out a few new DS games this week. One of them was Scribblenauts, which is a sort of action/platformer/logic/puzzle game in which you type in various nouns and very often those objects will simply appear on screen and you can use them to solve the various puzzles at hand. Some of the tasks are straightforward enough, such as “Get from point A to point B.” Your avatar, Maxwell, will then engage with these objects sometimes in surprising ways in an effort to achieve the goal. What is interesting is that the game doesn’t seem to be fixated on a single solution that it wants you to stumble across but rather shows some of the most obviously clever programming I’ve seen in some time such that it allows for creativity in your solutions. Objects act in a particular way but it’s really up to you how to combine those interactions to solve the puzzles. It does have its quirks, of course: Anything this ambitious would. The control scheme for Maxwell is entirely touch-based and occasionally a bit wonky so you end up failing a level due to unexpected behavior rather than ineffective problem-solving. Still, it’s an original idea that works exceptionally well and I find myself wanting to show it off to people.
I also checked out Peggle Dual Shot which is, you know, Peggle on the DS. It works pretty well and I appreciated that there are a number of control mechanisms so it doesn’t force you to use the stylus. I played through the adventure mode of Peggle for the iPod and found it to be entertaining enough; there is an option to unlock all the Peggle Nights content if you finish the adventure mode here. I’m not sure I’m going to be committed enough to finish the game again, and of course the locked content curse strikes again. I wish someone could explain the rationale behind locking box-advertised content on game discs, especially content that isn’t tied to game play. Obviously unlocking upgrades or experience-based abilities is kosher, but like Castlevania X or Contra 4 there is so little reason here other than to shoehorn players into some developer or (worse) marketer’s idea of how the game should be played.
Perhaps the most important DS game I took for a test drive was Blood Bowl. Originally my excitement level for Cyanide’s adaptation of the tabletop game was sky-high but when the launch date came and went without a sign of the Xbox (Live Arcade?) edition, I was left shrugging at the triumph of a PC variant. I don’t play PC-only games, being a Mac user, so I had to hope they would get around to my platform of choice eventually. I did note with some interest the PSP/DS handheld versions but 15 minutes messing with the DS one at a friend’s house wasn’t enough to coax cash from my pocket. It fell into that weird nexus of a game that I need more time than a quick fiddle will allow to determine if it’s the kind of game I can spend a long time with. Many turn-based strategy RPGs are like this with me: It takes me a couple of hours to get into it and from there I can decide if I want to dive in full-bore and ultimately spend dozens of hours playing. That’s a tough sell for a trial run though. So I had my opportunity and I can say that at this point I’m glad I didn’t make the plunge. On one hand I want to support Cyanide’s dedication to the game I love, but frankly it’s a pretty rough game in terms of visuals, interface and pacing. Blood Bowl is pretty ponderous by nature but it never feels sluggish while you’re playing on the tabletop. Blood Bowl on the DS though feels epic even in single player mode where the CPU plays through an opponents turn pretty quickly.
It wasn’t just DS mania this week, I also returned to the well quite a bit for Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers, including a brief stint of online play versus Dr. Mac. Once again I was disappointed to discover that co-op, while making a pretty strong resurgence in the last few years, is still regularly fumbled by game devs. Let me spell it out as clearly as I am able: What I really want, 99% of the time, is online co-op versus the computer. Anytime a game offers a co-op mode but does not Live-enable it, I get stabby. Still, the game is enjoyable and playing online with one of my oldest Magic partners was wonderful (even if baby + Live = ill communication). I did lose both matches and Doc told me I should check out the black and green elf deck as it appears to be the Ranked match deck of choice. Since I’m trying to unlock 100% of the available cards, a feat which requires winning 17 matches with each deck, I decided to make that one my next project. The trouble is, I must be a terrible Magic player because I had to try half a dozen times against various different AI decks before I could make the deck work right. I can see it’s point: It contains a large number of relatively cheap Elf creatures and then a couple of spells which provide boosts for each Elf in play topped by a creature who generates 1/1 Elf tokens for every Elf spell cast. When it works you can easily end up with a board covered in 1-3 mana cost creatures that are anywhere from 5/5 through 10/10, often with Forestwalk and other useful effects. The trouble is, it has a gaping weakness in that it contains few or no flying creatures or defenses relying on getting its combo out so the opponent has to sacrifice his fliers as blocking fodder to keep from getting waxed. But the deck isn’t fast enough to get there without being pummeled by low cost flying creatures while your low cost Elves get locked up by some inexpensive defenses. I did finally defeat the all-green AI deck but it wasn’t easy since in some case that deck’s creatures can benefit from the cards that make the green/black work. I’m not sure how long my patience will last if I’m winning one in every six matches… times 16.
When I last compiled my Top 30 Games list, I put Bionic Commando at number 14. Obviously that classic NES game stuck with me so it was basically a given that I’d be involved with the resurgence they tried to fabricate for the franchise recently. Bionic Commando: Rearmed for XBLA was a well-executed re-imagining of the original game although I felt in some cases like they had turned what had been merely an interesting mechanic into a gimmick with all the challenge rooms and extra frills. I was less enthusiastic but still intrigued by the full 3D update but I requested it from Goozex anyway with a shrug and a “What the heck?” I managed to get through a couple of hours of the game and so far it’s not terrible but it does suffer somewhat from Capcom Writing Syndrome which is to say the writing plays double-dutch with the line between campy fun, uber cheese and eye-rolling hackery. But listen, I’ve ploughed through Lost Planet, Dead Rising and countless Resident Evil games so I can cope if the game itself is enough fun. The jury remains out, but so far I’m a bit concerned that a lot of the mood and feel of the 2D platformer seems to be absent.
And lastly I finally got around to re-acquiring Fallout 3 (on 360 this time) because I always felt like I had somehow missed the boat a little on that game. I mean, an Oblivion-like game in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi setting? How was that not a perfect fit for me? Which isn’t to say I didn’t like it, but when I played through it I felt very frequently depressed like the setting was just too oppressively bleak. Perhaps it’s becuase the game’s supposed dark sense of humor didn’t do enough to dull the edges or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I played through as a do-gooder so the contrast of my righteousness with the general anarchistic tone of the game was too much after a while. Whatever the case, I always meant to go back and play the game some more but never was really able to get into it. And eventually the 1,000 Goozex points it represented were more important than the potential for additional playtime so I traded it off. Now that I have it back I’m realizing that part of it was just the original level cap and the closed, end-of-story conclusion to the main questline. The game offers so much OCDRPG excitement with its leveling system that capping it off felt like punishment and the inability to continue to roam the game world after the end game was enough to sever my interest. Now that I’m back in and up to level 8 already I can feel the Oblivion-like spell being cast and the calluses worn by familiarity with the grim plot have done much to soothe my sense of despair so I can get down to just enjoying the play. It is a credit to Bethesda that they were able to coax that much visceral response from the game, it’s just a shame the response was largely negative. One other reason I have the game in my possession now is that I also have copies of the expansion content arriving presently from Goozex so I can extend the experience a little and see what stuff I missed because I chose early adoption and a competing platform.