Gaming Weekend: Illness Edition
I spent half of the weekend being sick, which in some cases would mean extra gaming time but this particular flu made me mostly want to sleep. I did play some games in the earlier half of the week however including a new title I rented and I made some progress on a bunch of handheld titles I’ve had piling up plus I finally part ways with a divisive game I happened to enjoy quite a lot and I ruminate on the curious state of playing a game just because it’s already in the console.
Army of Two
Some people have made a point of the lackluster single-player game in the co-op heavy Army of Two. Since I don’t really know anyone else who has this game, that is sadly all I’m relegated to and it got me thinking about developer intention. In many ways the co-op by design formula of Army of Two mirrors the multiplayer-only controversies that swirled around last year’s Warhawk and Shadowrun titles. I think something like Team Fortress 2 slid out of the critical sweepkick range because of its inclusion in The Orange Box, but the case remains: These are games designed for specific styles of play. Even BioShock got a few mild grumbles for its lack of multiplayer when it is clearly a first-person shooter where mp modes are the norm.So how much slack do we give developers in cases like this? I found that Gears of War was significantly more enjoyable as a two-player co-op game than a solo mission and other than a little bit of Halo 3 and a lot of Call of Duty 4 I mostly avoided online multiplayer last year (though CoD4 is a special case where I enjoyed both modes nearly equally but for very different reasons). I ploughed through a lot of FPS’ last year including The Darkness, Prey and FEAR all of which have or had decently active online communities but I favor single player campaigns to multiplayer and I favor co-op to solo missions where feasible.Obviously the ideal is to include some of everything so players can enjoy the game the way they want. Halo 3 is excellent at this providing remarkably complete experiences on all three fronts. But what about those games that were just designed around a specific mode? Are we okay with the BioShocks and Army of Twos and Shadowruns? I think in general gamers are pretty forgiving of single-player only games, probably because many early games were designed as such. Multiplayer-only games aren’t completely uncommon on the PC side of things especially with the rise of the MMORPG but they are pretty new to consoles which have only this generation been standardized in their inclusion of online capabilities. Co-op only games are, as Army of Two is probably discovering, rare for a reason.The basic mechanic in Army of Two is like Gears of War where you do most of your work from behind some kind of cover but the co-op conceit is that whomever is firing on the enemies the most earns “Aggro” on a meter which causes the enemies to focus their attention on the Aggro-heavy person while the other goes into a sort of stealth mode where they become nearly invisible, allowing them to perform effective flanking maneuvers. It works okay except that when you’re trying to coordinate with a computer-controlled teammate, you end up with spotty results.Put it this way, I don’t hate AoT, but I understand that as I play it I’m suffering for the lack of a human companion. The AI is spotty and part of it is the command tree which I find to be unintuitive in design. Specifically I’m looking for something more along the lines of Dead Rising’s point-and-direct feature so I can tell my mate where exactly I need him to be and then I need to have simple Aggro-based commands like “Build your Aggro,” or “Flank while I draw fire” or “Keep your fool head down until I can take care of this turret myself you bullwhipped baboon.” The Passive Hold, Aggressive Advance, etc. system just doesn’t work when the name of the game is teamwork and not unreliable AI guesswork.As it is I’m glad I went with the rental. If I knew someone on my Friends list who was super hyped about the game and we had agreed ahead of time to play through it together I might not have minded a purchase but for someone who just wanted to see what it was about, I did well by saving myself $55.
The Rest of the Games
- Assassin’s Creed – I went through and earned a couple more achievements for flag-hunting and then one for fighting off 25 guards in one combat before I looked at the list of things I needed to do for 100% gamerscore completion and I said, “Nah.” I know Assassin’s Creed got something of a bad rap from some people and reviewers making it one of the more controversial games of last year but I stand by my assessment that this is a fun if mildly flawed game. But there is only so much re-visitation you can do to try and extend the enjoyment of a game. Treasure hunting was fun for a while but it was becoming work and I decided I’d rather have the 1,000 Goozex points so I listed it and it got snatched up pretty quickly.
- Rock Band – This week we mostly played at a party on Friday night (the one where everyone got sick) which included many newbies to the game. It really made for a sort of rekindling of the flame since introducing people to the game is part of the joy and makes playing through some of the songs we’ve covered dozens of times worthwhile again. We eschewed Band World Tour mode and it’s faulty progression scheme for Band Quickplay and that worked quite well as we could re-configure the band depending on who was filling which role. As usual I ended up doing a fair share of the singing but with a larger group of people there were more volunteers so I had more chance to play drums and even a song or two on guitar and bass, which almost never happens during Joey Big Hat tours.
- Poker Smash – One thing I dislike about this game is the Achievement spread which seems focused on combos that are much more difficult to execute compared to Planet Puzzle League on the DS, almost exclusively because of the control scheme. In fact, the control scheme in general is somewhat aggravating because while the game itself is perhaps superior in raw mechanical terms compared to PPL, you would really need to have Poker Smash on the DS to do a direct comparison.
- Everyday Shooter – I still return to this at least once a weekend or so just because it’s so darn soothing to play. Which seems like a weird adjective to describe what can be a frenetic shooter but the mellow vibe, even of the later levels and their faux-metal stylings is so much more trance-inducing than the stressful vice-grip gameplay of GeoWars that I think it’s official: I like EDS better. There I said it. Also, the little riff that plays on the first level when you destroy one of those wave-of-blocks firing enemies will forever calm my dreams.
- Twisted Metal: Head On – Back in the day I was an enormous Twisted Metal nerd. I picked up the original shortly before its sequel was released so I had just enough time to fall in love with it before the seminal franchise title came out and I sunk massive, obscene amounts of time into TM2. Part of it was the Rock Band factor: It was the pastime du jour of our fledgling speed metal band just out of high school and I think we probably spent as much time if not more playing Twisted Metal than we did rehearsing, which probably explains why we never accomplished much as a band while I was in the line-up. Since those days I’ve had a hard time passing up a game of TM, but I’ve been consistently disappointed up until Black on the PS2. I even tried the original-developer take-back attempt Rogue Trip. Not that Black was particularly great, and the tonal shift was hit or miss, but it was certainly better than anything that came before. Now with Head On we have what amounts to the real Twisted Metal 3 on the PSP. I should be completely in love but curiously I find the controls on the PSP to be—for the first time—rather uncomfortable. Having to do the kind of fighting game dexterity moves to use ice bolts and such aren’t very accommodating when holding the heavier unit compared to the original DualShock. I’ll certainly continue to put it through its paces but initially I’m having a hard time playing more than one round at a time.
- Mega Man Powered Up – This game is simply fun; the cutesy makeover Capcom gave it may turn off some folks but as a guy who played Viva Piñata without thinking twice, I actually loved the new graphical style. Mega Man always had a kind of Saturday morning vibe to it and this captures it expertly. The adjustable per-level difficulty settings made for a fun, breezy experience on Easy (which I completed) and made for a nice extended challenge as you ramp up the level. In fact, I was pretty surprised that after coasting through the game I was still interested in moving to the higher difficulty levels. I still hope this game sold well enough to at least have the folks at Capcom considering the same treatment with Mega Man 2, but even if they don’t, I can’t complain too loudly.
- Sega Genesis Collection – I toyed with a few assorted games but mostly I’m still addicted to the brutal, unforgiving but wonderfully engaging Shinobi III. One thing I must complain about is that the music (at least the music I’ve heard the most, on Stage 4) isn’t particularly inspired. This is mostly significant because as a retro title I’m trying to experience the game is if it were something I had purchased back in Junior High and I can’t imagine hearing the Minibosses covering these songs and feeling like they’ve really struck a nostalgic chord with me. It’s tough to say for sure and it’s hard to say I’m not showing my Nintendo fanboy roots, but games like Castlevania III, Ninja Gaiden and Super Metroid had these haunting, wonderful soundtracks and so far the Sega games (at least the ones on this UMD) may be shoulder-to-shoulder gameplay-wise, but I’m not feeling the musical accompaniment. It’s a very, very minor nitpick, but it is standing out to me as I play.
- Jeanne D’Arc – The fairly linear progression of this game makes it significantly more suitable to my current gaming style which is (obviously?) to skip around and play a bit of many games when I have the chance. My most direct comparison point (Final Fantasy Tactics Advance) was a more fluid, open style that focused mostly on the job system and didn’t have that much in the way of a cohesive narrative. Well, it did but it wasn’t worth writing home about. Jeanne D’Arc has a nice progressive narrative that sets up each battle (at least in the first couple of chapters) with a story-shopping-equip-battle sequence. I am surprised at how deep the strategy comes in even without the overwhelming job system of FFTA; the enemies typically outnumber you pretty significantly and you really have to work with the terrain and choose your units wisely. The effect is to make the key strategy come not from advancing your characters (which is mostly a fiddly menu-driven asperger’s dream and not much of a gameplay mechanic) but from making the most of each turn in battle.
- Peggle – Yeah. I completed the initial “learn how to use each special power” levels and am halfway through the next set where you get to select which power you use. What I haven’t quite figured out is what some of the powers are good for; the Zen Ball seems the best but I do sometimes select the Fireball depending on the level layout. I guess the crab flippers have their use, but stuff like the Spookyball? Thanks but…
Demo Watch
- Kane & Lynch: Dead Men – I downloaded this from PSN and, well, I played it for about ten minutes. Clunky controls, bad voice acting, uninspiring graphics… I decided to pass.
- MLB ’08 The Show – The demo for this Sony baseball game is a bit strange in that, as near as I can tell, you can only play a three-inning game: Boston versus Colorado… and you have to play as the Red Sox. But the game itself is pretty solid; the graphics are impressive (the crowd especially animates nicely) and while I loved the pitching mechanics, I struggled a bit with the batting. I’d like to try 2K Sports’ game as a point of comparison but I think I’d be willing to at least rent this game and play it some more.
- Rocketmen: Axis of Evil – The super-generically titled XBLA title had a funky and intriguing visual flair and it almost had me going with the character selection screen’s plethora of fascinating options but it utterly lost me when I found the gameplay to be trite and so boring I literally fell asleep with the controller in my hand.