Gaming Weekend: A Matter of Opinion Edition
Running out of new ways to talk about stale things is maybe not a challenge more creative or clever writers have to surmount. But I’m writing a weekly column about the games that I play and while I’m reasonably content sometimes to focus on a handful of games for a period of time, it makes coming up with interesting commentary that isn’t dreadfully repetitive tough.
So rather than re-tread Blood Bowl strategies or discuss my Etrian Odyssey II progress, I’ll talk about a game I don’t even fully own: Braid. It was one of those titles whose ill-conceived title stems from some artsy interpretation but lacks descriptive punch and yet is spoken of with a particular connotation that more or less creates a conceptual bookmark in my mind. If my brain were del.icio.us, it might be tagged with “check_out_maybe.” So I see the ads on XBLA this weekend while I’m playing some GeoWars 2 and the flag is raised in the back of my head and I decide to drag myself away from my obsession long enough to give it a whirl.
I knew only that it had “positive buzz” going in. The demo is fairly significant in available content, but the game itself is clearly designed to be an exploratory experience which is something that may work in an artistic sense but as something that is designed to inspire me to spend money I’m not sure it’s effective. I can say that as a post-modern throwback-slash-genre interpretation, it’s interesting. I can also say that as an overall package it’s demonstration content is uneven to the extent that your individual criteria are going to be the deciding factors on whether or not you pull the trigger on this game.
For example, there is a particular elegance to most of the game’s presentation. The smoothly shifting watercolor aesthetic of the backdrops and the quiet, introspectively lilting music is fresh and exciting. Meanwhile, the pixely-looking cartoon design of the game’s characters is cute, but contrasts sharply with the backdrop and while one or the other would be fine with me, the combination is unpleasant. Likewise the game’s referential sense of humor and youthful presentation doesn’t gel in any ready way with its knife’s edge of pretentiousness in the story elements. Even the gameplay with it’s elegantly designed puzzles but awkwardly integrated and purposefully sketchy tutorial/hint system feels painfully unbalanced.
A lot of online forums are lamenting the $15 price tag, which has itself fostered a backlash, one that may or may not have ulterior motives. Personally, I see it as just another in the game’s list of see-sawing pros and cons. Like I said, it becomes intensely personal. Either $15 for a platformer is repugnant and it wouldn’t matter if you were paying for the best platformer ever, you’d be morally opposed to the act, or you have no problem with it because you rationalize that $15 is still $45 cheaper than some alternatives. Either the art design is acceptable or the weirdly incongruous graphics are a deal-breaker. I don’t know how you can quantify something like this.
So listen, I didn’t buy it. I’m intrigued, for sure. I’m the kind of person who can overlook some strangeness in a game to find the chewy center that lies beneath. I’m playing Etrian Odyssey II, after all. And I’m putting hours and hours into it. But something about the nexus between the game’s odd choices and its price and its hyperbolic critical acclaim… I dunno, it wasn’t enough to push me over the line. Any time a game polarizes this way, I almost feel like I need to just stand aside. Maybe eventually it will be part of some XBLA Best Of promotion for $5 or something and I’ll catch up with it then. Meanwhile, I have something less controversial to play. Something I’m still more likely to enjoy.
The List
- Blood Bowl - I played through two more matches. Winning both, I’ve now put together three straight wins and a five-game set of zero defeats if you include the two earlier ties. But, listen, only one of those five games was against Thom. That’s not meant to take anything away from my other opponents, but in his 15 games to date he’s 10-1-4 so he’s clearly the most dominant coach. He’s also the player I personally have the most trouble with. However, I have been having more success in general because of lessons I’ve learned. I’m more comfortable with my Undead team now, I know how to avoid setting myself up for failure. Saturday’s game against Aaron’s Lizardmen was my most significant win thus far: I was playing an unknown team who may have had significant advantages in terms of speed and strength in some cases and I still came out on top 3-1. It easily could have been closer, but just breaking the two-TDs-per-game barrier was signficant to me.
- Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 - The per-game-mode leaderboards are what are inspiring most of my dedication to the game at this point. The fact that someone else on my Friends List has a higher score on a couple modes drives me crazy and my obsessive pursuit of regaining the crown has me up late at night. Certain modes are clearly my strong suits while others have a maddening ability to mock me: Almost without fail every time I think, “Hey, this is shaping up to be a pretty good round,” I make a series of preventable mistakes and cost myself a lofty perch on top of the leaderboard. It’s possibly petty to care, but competition isn’t something I normally experience so when I do I guess it’s just for the best that it comes in arenas where there are virtually zero consequences.
- Etrian Odyssey II - I’ve slowed my progress some mostly due to fewer instances of downtime in the past week or so. I did finish a couple of non-story quests and earned some items I already had for my troubles.
- Sorry! Sliders - I spent some time at Thom’s house on Saturday night while my wife had a girl’s night at our place. Of course we played some Blood Bowl but after Aaron left we tried out his new dexterity game, Sorry! Sliders. Basically you take some customized Sorry! pieces that have ball bearings in their bases and you slide them along these cardboard tracks in a kind of curling/bocce variant. There are quite a few variations but my clear favorite was one that had a hole cut in the center just big enough to accept a single piece. A shallow ring around the cutout scored you your choice of either 4, 5 or 6 points. Points are awarded by moving mini Sorry! pieces along a vertical track toward a Home location but they have to enter Home by exact count.
Since the center cutout was a Sorry! event that forced your highest scoring track piece back to the starting position but the ring around it was almost a guaranteed Home, it had a remarkable risk/reward dynamic that the other variants, despite being enjoyable, lacked. We played for about an hour and a half and while not the kind of game Thom and I usually gravitate toward, we had a lot of fun with it.