Gaming Weekend: Tile-Based Edition
Before I expound on my gaming activities over the past three days, I should preface it by saying that the amount of diversity depicted here comes courtesy of GameZnFlix. I posted a while back that GameFly’s rate changes and shipping issues were causing me to sour on their otherwise stellar service. Ultimately my concerns fell on deaf ears and they showed no desire to try and reach out to me so I reluctantly canceled my account. I also mentioned that the alternatives weren’t ideal but eventually I decided to try GameZnFlix because they seemed to have the least online vitriol pointed at them and I was able to find a coupon code (EMMYS, in case you’re curious) that made the three game package significantly cheaper than even the one-game deal at GameFly (about $13 versus $17).
I had some initial trouble with the registration process: They use an address verification system that spit cryptic error messages at me about my credit card’s billing address not matching what I entered. Eventually I used my wife’s card and for whatever reason that went through. Also, just to get the down sides out of the way up front, I found that their site isn’t very feature-complete nor is it particularly easy to navigate and their selection of games (well, at least their 360 games) is kind of limited. Still, there are enough games in there that are worth the small fee to fill a queue with twenty games plus another half dozen that are listed as being “on order” so even if I only hang on to the service for a few months, I should get some good money’s worth out of it. What has so far impressed the heck out of me is that I confirmed the order Wednesday night and by Friday afternoon I already had my games in the mailbox. So whatever GameFly is doing, it seems clear to me now that they could be doing it better.
It’s too early to call this a recommendation but in the short time I’ve been a customer, I’ve been pretty happy with what matters the most: Getting some new games to play. Now if they could just do something about their name: Shouldn’t the spelling be GamezNFlix? What significance does the capital Z have?
Read on for talk about the actual games.
It Wasn’t Shaping Up To Be That Exciting
I started the weekend working a bit more on my strange obsession with Lego Star Wars II. I can’t tell if Achievements have made me a completionist or if I just wasn’t playing the kinds of games that I find myself compelled to “work” on previously, but between my efforts at getting 1,000 points in Dead Rising and now LSWII, something has gotten into me. The frustration of LSWII is that all of the non-progress Achievements are earned by finishing levels without dying. Typically this is easier said than done because there are a myriad pitfalls and difficult battles that during the regular course of the game don’t matter because dying is essentially a non-event or, at worst, an annoyance. Plus, your four-hit life meter never improves during the game so until you start worrying about these Achievements, defeat just becomes part of the natural progression through the game.
Trying to run through the levels and solve just enough of the puzzles to continue making progress while trying not to be overwhelmed by the ever-present foes and also trying not to do something stupid like step off a cliff in pursuit of a bouncing stud is far tricker than just making it to the end in order to advance the story. Now, granted, this process is made easier once you unlock one of the Ghost Jedis (playable versions of the ghostly forms of Yoda, Obi-Wan and Anakin that appear to Luke at the tail end of Return of the Jedi). Ghost Jedis cost an arm and a leg but are effectively invincible to enemy fire and don’t even attract their attention when you walk by them. Of course you can still die by falling off a cliff so jumping puzzles get pretty nerve-wracking, but at least it’s something.
If that were all I was trying to do, it probably wouldn’t matter. But I figure I’m going through these levels again anyway, why not try to get as much of the other stuff as possible? So each run ends up being this epic quest for Minikit canisters, Power Bricks, studs to pay for unlockables and an attempt to avoid death so I can earn an Achievement. Needless to say, it rarely goes according to plan on the first try.
I thought at first that I’d play some of this, pop in Viva Piñata for a bit and maybe try starting a new garden with my same progress or perhaps see about making some more progress on Hardcore difficulty in Gears of War. Somehow, I never got to any of those games.
I’m Your New Obsession
It started with the trial game for Carcassonne. Now, I’ve played a lot of the tabletop version of “The Castle” variant. It’s one of the standby games my wife and I play when there’s no one else to join because it’s such a fun, medium-short length two-player game. There’s plenty of strategy but it’s not too complex to bog it down and it doesn’t require an hour just to set it up or anything. So I was pretty enthusiastic about the XBLA version of the original game, even though I hadn’t actually played that specific flavor.
The key difference between the two games is that The Castle has a set outer ring that prevents the game from spreading beyond a certain size or shape. Because of this there is a little bit more of a methodical pace to The Castle where the original, at least on XBLA, can move remarkably fast sometimes. But in either case the game itself is insanely fun. I wonder sometimes when playing Carcassonne how messy the game might be on a tabletop because sometimes the board gets to be these odd, sprawling shapes and it just seems really well suited for a pick-up-and-play casual style video game. I suppose I don’t have to say that the trial game didn’t last long and I purchased the full version nearly right away.
I started off playing against the computer and quickly became obsessed with it, even to the point where I would turn it on for a quick game whenever there was eight or nine minutes of downtime. Eventually I got my wife to play with me and I have to say that the availability of local multiplayer is part of why I think this game is even better than Catan. I do realize the difficulty of local multiplayer with Catan considering the hand-of-cards mechanic that wouldn’t translate too well, but I wish they’d at least offered it as an option. The beauty of playing against a real person is that the computer, while occasionally competent at the higher difficulty levels, becomes pretty predictable and you can easily pick out what strategies the developers added to increase the challenge.
Anyway, four days later and I still find myself returning to this game for a few rounds in between other games. As discussed on the recent 1Up Yours podcast, this has become my standard palate cleansing game.
Before you assume this is an unqualified endorsement of the game, I should note that it does have one problem which is the on-screen display which is a little bit adjustable but not nearly good enough on a standard def TV and it and the camera often conspire to make viewing the board as it is being built as difficult as humanly (mechanically?) possible. Other than that, there is no reason not to buy this game.
Then Opened the Floodgates
I could have been content to rock Carcassonne all weekend long, but I was surprised to find the mailbox stuffed full of rental games on Friday evening and I spent the night trying them out. The games I got were Fuzion Frenzy 2, Enchanted Arms and Crackdown. I’ll only bullet-point the first two and save the bulk of the chatter for Crack[down].
- Fuzion Frenzy 2 – Ugh. This game is a mess. At first I thought it was kind of fun but the more I played it the more I realized that this game doesn’t want you to have fun, it wants desperately to annoy the heck out of you at every turn. I guess it’s kind of like a Mario Party take off, but the minigames suffer badly from horrendous controls that are never, ever internally consistent and aren’t usually adequately explained before you begin. Also the game rewards dumb luck with the scoring system that allows losers to leverage these special cards (whose effects are only applied sometimes for reasons that are never really made clear) into crushing victories and there is a new candidate for The Most Annoying Video Game Character Ever in the MC (who arbitrarily goes by “DJ”): He chats incessantly between matches and during them as well, although he commits the double sin during the matches of repeating his one or two catchphrases until you want to fling th disc out of a quickly moving vehicle as soon as possible. I’ve already put it back in the envelope to be sent out.
- Enchanted Arms — On one hand it’s a perfectly serviceable Japanese-style RPG on the 360. On the other hand, after playing Oblivion I don’t know how much patience I’m going to have for this kind of game anymore (and frankly I was getting pretty burned on them before Oblivion came along). I do plan to give it a bit more time but it needs to do something to compel my continued interest pretty quickly here or it may get the premature axe.
And then, of course, there is Crackdown. I made a point to wait to play this game until after the Halo 3 beta. Frankly I like the single-player modes in Halo better than the MP and I heard so much that this game was worth playing outside of its value as the vessel for Halo that I wanted to experience this game on its own merits alone.
The good news—or bad news, depending on how you look at it— is that Crackdown is a very good game and insanely addictive. It’s exactly the kind of good-guy GTA that I’ve been wanting for some time and it has a lot of really solid stuff that make it worth recommending.
The graphics have this comic book stylization to them that isn’t quite realistic but it isn’t exactly cel-shaded either but no matter what you call it, it looks fantastic. It also has some of the most engaging sandbox gameplay I’ve ever experienced that encourages exploration while beefing up your character in the process. Plus, and this may be a shock for GTA fans, the combat is actually fun.
I sat down to play the game for a few minutes before crashing after messing with the other two for most of the night. Three hours later I looked up to find it was light outside and I needed to drag myself away from the console and get some rest. So far I’ve made it through two of the three islands (yes, already) and have my agility up to four stars so I was able to get to the top of the Agency tower which is just fun to do, and then jump off, which got me a couple of Achievements in a very satisfactory manner. One thing about the rooftop jumping in this game, it’s so effective about giving everything the appropriate sense of height and scale that I very literally found myself getting a lurch in my stomach when I fell off of certain structures. The plunge into the sea from the top of the Agency tower? A visceral rush, which is something I don’t think I’ve ever experienced in that way from a game before.
Now, granted, the game is kind of shallow when compared to the detail of GTA: San Andreas and the driving isn’t nearly as fun as it is in GTA (and unfortunately nowhere near as fun as running and jumping on the rooftops), but as a rental I couldn’t be happier so far. Beta? What beta?