Gaming Weekend: Dabbling Edition
The laser-focused attention to Mass Effect earlier this month has given way now that I’ve put that opus behind me, and I’ve been left looking for something to fill the void. Instead I’ve found sustenance in smaller morsels of a wider variety.
Of course no discussion of this weekend could be complete without mentioning The Darkness, which I finished in a pretty single-minded push Friday morning. I mentioned the game briefly a few weeks ago and I wasn’t terribly positive about the game at the time, but after finishing it I have a slightly different take on it. The bottom line is that as a plain shooter, it fails. The enemy AI is pretty transparent, the weapons aren’t terribly interesting and the level design is kind of messy and repetitive. But The Darkness succeeds in crafting a pretty intriguing pulp-y tale (which favorably tips its hat to its comic book roots) and the mechanics introduced by the Darkness powers are wonderfully executed.
I said before that the ramp-up of the Darkness powers feels wrong and I stand by that statement. The problem is that the game is most fun when you’re using the powers and you don’t even get several of them until over three-quarters of the way through the game. Once you do get all the abilities the desire and rationale behind using standard firearms almost disappears which is actually wonderful but then the game throws a ridiculous curveball at you right near the end putting you in a situation where you are literally unable to use the Darkness. It’s not that you lose the powers or anything. You still have them, you just can’t use them and the lights that prevent you from activating them are—for the only time in the entire game—unable to be destroyed.
What The Darkness suffers from primarily is its inability to recognize what makes it fun. Wandering around in the dark (which, by the way, the method they used to encourage you to work in as close to total darkness as possible while not unhinging the game with, you know, forcing you to play on a black screen is quite brilliant) and using cool powers to try and comprehend the strange series of events that propel the plot forward is wonderful. Doing pointless fetch quests, navigating an overly simplistic overworld that somehow manages to be obtuse at the same time, hunting for lame and uninteresting collectable garbage and suffering through the flawed shooting mechanics is not fun and yet the ratio is about 40:60. Which means that not even half the game is the parts that make you want to play.
The story also derails a bit at times since the criss-crossing branches of the plot don’t ever quite meld into something cohesive enough to elicit that “Whoa, cool!” moment that I felt it could have offered, but it at least falls into the positive category of video game storytelling. One thing it does have which I think could have been even more effectively exploited is a real sense of tenderness. The scenes with the main character’s girlfriend Jenny can be remarkably poignant and the epilogue of the game reaches this plateau as well. It’s a small part of the game that feels almost accidental in its casual inclusion but is something that is perhaps served by that sense. Unlike games such as Indigo Prophecy or even Mass Effect that work really hard at fabricating a sense of intimacy, The Darkness achieves it almost in part because it doesn’t try.
Other Games
- Puzzle Quest – The march toward level 50 nears its end as I put a pretty solid block of time into grinding in the game. I’ve nearly perfected my devastating combo at this point (I lack only the ability to speed the mana intake sufficiently so I can start executing the combo prior to turn six or seven), but I think the minor problems I encounter are a by product of having much of my equipment and several spell slots taken up with XP-multiplying stuff to aid the level grind. Once I hit 50 I should be able to fine tune things so that I simply overpower any non-boss opponent. As it is I completed a match against a leveled opponent with roughly 200 HP without losing a single life point myself, so I think I’m well on my way.
- The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass – I actually had a chance to play a bit more in this game, picking up the ever-so-enjoyable Bombchus. I’m inching my way through this game and I think part of it is that the game is far more uneven than I originally thought (long-lasting first impressions being that it was consistently brilliant). It does have some stratospheric high points but it also has some merely-decent low points that make it a tough slog for short segments. In a casual, portable title, this could be a kiss of death for a lesser game. TPH trancends, but only on merits that I’m not convinced have nothing to do with nostalgia.
- NCAA 08 – I still think the graphics on this game are atrocious for a “next gen” title. The weather effects for snowy conditions are especially bad with the players appearing to float on nothingness since the developer’s idea of snowy ground is to add a partially transparent white filter to the regular field. There are no footprints left by players (something you’ll recall the PS1 game Metal Gear Solid accomplished) and the particle effects in the air are… well, they’re best left alone is what they are. Some parts of the game are impressive like the sheen on the player uniforms, but overall they’re uneven to the point of distracting from the game.
- Mass Effect – I actually started a second game with the intention of playing through quickly (avoiding side quests) to do the Renegade thing. Unfortunately, I accidentally turned off auto-save and didn’t think I’d die in my first encounter with an enemy (I often forget how nerfed you start out once I’ve progressed to a certain point in an RPG which is why I still have never fully finished Final Fantasy VII), so I lost my progress and couldn’t bear the thought of starting all over right away.
- Halo 3 – I went back and did a little achievement hunting by collecting a couple of golden skulls with the help of YouTube. I hope some co-op lovers on my Friends list get this game for Christmas because I’m interested in going through the campaign on Legendary co-op, but everyone I know already accomplished that particular goal a couple of months ago.
- Okami – It may be useful to to temper what I’m about to say with the following fact: I very much want to like this game. Everything I’ve heard about it has been positive and suggestive of the fact that this is right up my alley. Unfortunately, when I put it in my PS2, I found that it put me to sleep. Not once. Not twice. Three times. The game is painfully overwritten, at least in the introductory sequence which seems to last roughly eight and a half hours. And then you’re presented with, after all that exposition, only the vaguest of clues as to what you are and what you are to be doing. I sent it back admittedly without giving it the same sort of fair shake I’ve given much less beloved titles (like, for instance, Nintey-Nine Nights). I justify this by thinking that perhaps I was meant to experience this game as a Wii title once I eventually break down and buy a Wii but as a PS2 “missed classic” it just wasn’t something I was going to get into.
- Call of Duty 4 – I ploughed through another segment of the game on Veteran. I’ve noticed that I actually find Veteran to be less frustrating than the step down which I completed the game on the first time through because in Veteran if you choose a poor strategy, you know it pretty darn quick. There is a room in the TV station fairly early in the game that gave me fits on the lesser difficulty setting because I was determined to rush the door directly across from the entrance point. Eventually I was able to get lucky enough to pull it off but it took hours. On Veteran the room was no less difficult but I learned rapidly that rushing the opposite door is flat out suicide: The approach that worked was to race to cover on the east corner of the room and hope they don’t get any lucky grenade bounces. It took me maybe two dozen tries, but that’s a significant improvement over the maybe sixty attempts it took previously.
- Geometry Wars – According to 360Voice, I’ve played GeoWars on 72 different days since last year. Now many of those are short, sub-ten-minute games played once per day, but that still means that I’ve been firing this game up for at least a short while for about two and a half months. Not bad for a $4.99 download.
Demo Watch
I popped in a couple of OXM Demo Discs I’ve had lying around and tried out a few things.
- Arkadian Warriors – I did play it for very long as it was late and I was ready for bed before I noticed the download complete automatically, but I am a fan of “full” games on XBLA so I may return to this. I wasn’t that impressed in my 15 minutes of sampling but it may have more to offer that a deeper investigation could uncover.
- MX vs. ATV Untamed – A horrible, horrible demo for what I assume is a smash-hit game. Not sure why, exactly, I wasted my time with this.
- Medal of Honor: Airborne – Let’s put it this way: If Call of Duty 2 or even CoD 3 did not exist, this game might be worth checking out. But the parachuting mechanic doesn’t add enough to make up for the ways in which MoH falls short of CoD. It’s not bad by any stretch, but the been-there-done-that vibe is so strong that I found myself wondering if I was having deja vu or if this franchise (and—perhaps I can suggest it?—this setting) has worn thin and should be retired gracefully.
- Sega Rally Revo – The floaty controls make it tough to see what the devs were trying to do with this game. The deforming track is a gimmick and nothing more. I confess that I never even tried Sega Rally on the Dreamcast but if this is what people were all hyped about, I don’t understand.