Gaming Weekend: Portability Edition
A queue of PSP titles that had been sitting in my Goozex requests list dropped into my mailbox over the weekend and since most of the home console games I’m playing now felt a little stale, I spent a lot of time hunched over the portable PlayStation. I did manage to squeeze in some non-PSP gaming as well, but to see my thoughts on the controversial Manhunt 2, initial impressions of Jeanne D’Arc and thoughts on Flash games, forge ahead.
Victimless Crime
The worst PSP game I picked up this weekend was Manhunt 2. Now I didn’t expect much from the game but the brouhaha that erupted when the ESRB refused to rate the game for retail (slapping it with the unmarketable Adults Only rating) in its initial form had me curious. When I heard about the compromise to bring it to market I thought it sounded like a strange response and ultimately I was interested in seeing what Rockstar had come up with that was so horrible.
It turns out that the biggest problem with Manhunt 2 isn’t the grotesque violence but the crummy game that is supposed to drive it. The set up is that you’re an inmate in a psych ward for the criminally insane. An accident frees all the inmates and you’re led along by a disembodied voice that tells you to stalk silently through the shadows and kill or be killed as you try to escape. The deaths you inflict come in a series of close melee attacks like jabbing a syringe into some guard’s throat.
These execution moves (those are the game’s terms, by the way) are supposed to be sort of cinematic but have been filtered under some weird effects that I guess are supposed to distract from the action being taken to make it more acceptable for… the squeamish? It’s not clear what the intent is when this happens that improves it from just showing the full animation. In any case it’s almost moot because the execution attacks only work when you successfully sneak up on an enemy and as with most stealth-based games, the sneaking mechanic is clumsy and ultimately boring. Which means that typically my impatience gets me noticed and I have to rely on the clunky hand-to-hand controls to defeat the foes.
But the game is so janky in nearly every aspect that it never once shows any sign of being fun: The camera is automatic so you don’t get a full sense of freedom which means you feel like you’re constantly struggling to get a decent view of what’s happening; the radar system is pointless; the sneaking is almost impossible since you have to use the few bits of shadow provided (no dynamic lighting adjustment as seen in Splinter Cell) and the story is a giant cliche with nothing compelling to drive the player forward. Which means that principally the game is centered around these execution moves that are often difficult to pull off and when you do they’ve been nerfed under the goofy filters anyway. I know that removing the filters would not have improved the game for me anyway but I think I can now understand why the ESRB and British ratings board abhorred this game because it’s designed as a vehicle for those sadistic animations and little else.
Rockstar swears the game is intended as a horror game but the horror is of the Saw and Hostel variety (which I already loathe) and even then isn’t effective because the graphics are terrible and there is that annoying filter thing happening. Fundamentally the ESRB concessions resulted in the entire premise of Manhunt 2 being nerfed and considering what a crappy premise it was to begin with, so much the better.
The Casual Market
One of the games I played this weekend was the new N+ demo on XBLA. Now, I lost many hours to the downloadable Flash-based version of N and I’m happy to report that N+ is a great port and works fantastically with the Xbox controller. The problem is that I can’t decide if it’s the kind of game I’d want to spend money on. I mean I love it as a free game and the physics-heavy gameplay is challenging in that masochism-as-fun kind of way but is it really $10 worth of fun?
Putting a price tag on this kind of thing is always a strange endeavor: I’m currently enjoying Dwarf Complete and SameGame, but I feel like my attraction to them is mostly dependent on the fact that I can play them for free. Desktop Tower Defense, another game I enjoy, is not something I’d be interested in paying for even though I’ve sunk several hours into it over the last few weeks.
What I can’t quite decide is whether the problem is that they were/are free and then in a different context they might suddenly be worth money or if those games just aren’t good enough to warrant a purchase but they serve the occasional entertainment need simply due to their absence of entry barrier. I don’t want to go so far as to say Desktop Tower Defense or N aren’t good enough games to command a purchase price, but I also can’t say that I’d have enjoyed them at all if I had been required to pay for them up front.
The Rest of the Games
- Jeanne D’Arc – For some reason this game didn’t get a lot of press when it was released last year despite getting strong reviews. I can’t really give an unqualified recommendation yet since I’m only maybe two hours in, but so far it has proven difficult to step away from this game long enough to give some of the other new titles a shake. It has some gorgeous Anime cutscenes, excellent in-engine graphics, a clever story that casts a fantastical spin to the tale of Joan of Arc and some wonderful turn-based strategy gameplay that is similar to Final Fantasy Tactics but different enough to not feel like a ripoff. Get used to hearing about this game, I’ll probably be talking about it for some time.
- Mega Man Powered Up – I have a soft spot for remakes. It’s not that I particularly think developers should be milking classic games for NPD gold or anything, but video games are so iterative anyway that with sequels often being essentially remakes, it works to have aging games that had competence at their cores facelifted and updated to be closer to modern so long as the key elements of what made them work in the first place remains intact. MMPU does this admirably by keeping most everything about the original Mega Man game identical to the original but with a fresh coat of 3D paint and some nice (if a bit childish) story scenes added in. The peculiar quirks of the Mega Man series (well, before they went off the deep end with all the Battle Network/X stuff) are intact and the new graphical style is just as charming as ever so for people who loved the old games this is nearly ideal. I say nearly because as good as Mega Man was, Mega Man 2 was immeasurably superior and I wish they’d given that game the same treatment.
- Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles – Unlike Mega Man Powered Up, I never played the original Rondo of Blood so while Dracula X Chronicles does a similar 3D remake routine with Rondo, I can’t really say how good of a job Konami did because I have nothing to compare it to. Taken on its own merits though, Rondo is a wonderful game that precisely bridges the gap between Castlevania III and Symphony of the Night (which I only recently played on XBLA and is also included on the Dracula X Chronicles disc as an unlockable extra, with a few updates and a new translation/voiceover). The levels are linear like III, but the style and sensibilities are familiar to the Metroid-style SotN-era Castlevania fan. The 3D graphics are competent though not mind-blowing and really look the best during the regular side-scrolling portions, showing either the limitations of the PSP or a lack of dedication in the cut scenes. Still, there isn’t much to complain about aside from the fact that SotN and the original 2D Rondo have to be unlocked via a convoluted means by playing through the 3D remake and locating certain hidden items. It’s annoying but in my case not a deal breaker since I still have SotN on Live Arcade.
- Rock Band – Joey Big Hat’s weekly meeting/jam session was moderately successful this week. I’m becoming increasingly annoyed at Band World Tour mode’s nagging limitations, in this case the fact that you can’t excise particularly annoying songs (Aerosmith’s wretched “Train Kept a-Rollin’,” for the loss) from random lists. It’s bad enough that the song comes up at all, but also having a randomizer that doesn’t take into account recently played songs means everyone’s least favorite song came up three times in an hour and we eventually took the hit on our fanbase to just cancel out of the gig rather than struggle through that stinker. I did however enjoy performing Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” in a matter-of-fact, Walter Cronkite-style inflection, even if it did only get me 76%.
- Assassin’s Creed – I picked this game up since my brother-in-law and fellow Joey Big Hat bandmate brought back my copy that he borrowed. I’m still very much enjoying the flag scavenger hunt thanks to the marvelous interactive maps I found. I never would have thought that a game I was sort of on the fence about would have this long of legs, but I’ll keep rolling along looking for flags and such until it no longer interests me.
- Gears of War – It is not possible to explain how badly I hate General RAAM. I continue to subject myself to punishment from this cheating boss because when I beat the game initially doing co-op the game glitched and I missed the ending cinema scene. Not that the game’s story was so great that I demand to know how it ends, but it’s the principle of it all you know. Even tips from GameFAQ have proved to be no use since I’ve been trying to employ their recommended strategies all along, obviously to no effect.
- Mass Effect – I made some more progress with my Renegade character, picking up Liara after leaving the Citadel. So far there isn’t much to report since as of yet things haven’t differed that much from my original Paragon playthrough but I suspect that will begin to change as I advance past the ally collection stage and especially when I start getting Renegade all over Benezia and that weird plant thing under the mining colony.
- Poker Smash – I still don’t see how this game isn’t getting raves because it’s practically brilliant although I did try the Puzzle mode on Friday and found it to be less enjoyable than the similar mode in Planet Puzzle League. I think the number of permutations available in making matches increases the enjoyment of the basic lift attack mode over PPL, but trying to grasp what the designers intended for a set puzzle gets too overwhelming to process without resorting to a less-than-enjoyable trial and error method.
- Hotel Dusk: Room 215 – The game has slowed to a crawl already. A problem many adventure games (I’m talking point-and-click style adventure here, not in the Tomb Raider/Uncharted sense) is that they either guide you through by the hand which isn’t much of a game or they leave everything open for you to figure out and risk being so obtuse that they become frustrating. Hotel Dusk is falling into the latter trap.
- Everyday Shooter – Unfortunately, as much as I love the way ES is presented, there is actually a GeoWars-style difficulty curve present here. The problem is that it manifests itself by having the later levels, which are unlockable if you are persistent enough on the easier stages, be punishingly hard. Also I’ve noticed that so far the song quality is front loaded in that I enjoy listening/playing the first three stages much more by sheer strength of the soundtrack versus the fourth or fifth levels. Perhaps it has something to do with repetition since I rarely reach the higher levels on the progressive play mode but stylistically they just don’t do as much for me as the earlier tracks. It’s still my new go-to game for that genre, however.
- Silent Hill Origins – Despite the new influx of games, I did play a little more SH earlier in the week. My frustration with the mechanics has made it easy to set the game aside in favor of the newer options, and that’s kind of a bummer. I do intend to give it another solid push pretty quickly here so I can unload it on Goozex, but I’ll have to give it a break for a week or two so I can go back fresh and hopefully ignore the issues long enough to get to the end.