![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
amused – APR 23, 2008 01:44 PM | I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but you really need to check out this week's Zero Punctuation review. Hilarious. It rings so true. And here I thought I was weird because I didn't like playing Super Smash Brothers when it came out for the GameCube. |
|
||||
| [games, world of warcraft] |
| Fighting Fuckwadism. He cites WoW as an example of a game which has done a good job of eliminating fuckwadism. I'd say it's pretty good, but they have a ways to go yet. |
For my birthday, my sister "gave" me (in the form of a Future Shop gift certificate), a new game for my DS, which I've been playing on the Go Train lately. It's called "Advance Wars: Day of Ruin". It is the latest game in a series of Advance Wars games, but is the first one I've played (not for lack of trying, but it is impossible to find the other DS game, and previous ones were on the GBA). Anyway, it is a terrific game. Other than the fluff, it is exactly how I wish Warhammer 40k had been implemented on video game consoles, and that includes Dawn of War. It's turn-based, which gives me a fighting chance, because, as previously established, I suck at RTS games. Basically, you're given a bunch of units, each with different stats (movement, defense, attack, etc), and you have to move them around the map, capturing enemy bases and killing opposing units. Units are strong against certain enemies, weak against others. You can easily preview a unit's movement range or attack range, so strategizing is simple, yet deep. Unlike table-top strategy games, it's played on a grid, so I suppose it's closer to a board game. And what I'd really like to say about this paradigm is they've taken a board game and extended it in a way that only a video game can: increase the number of unit types, increase the stats for each unit, etc. Where if you were playing this on a table, you'd be drowning in rules, in a video game, it's all stored by the game, and exposed to you by a graceful UI. The bottom line is that it's clear the game designers were board-game players who decided to extend that experience onto the console. Sounds simple, but there are next to no games that do this or do it well. Disappointingly, the fluff is uninspiring. It's a post-apocalyptic world, but you are still stuck with standard modern-world military units: Tanks, Helicopters, Jeeps, Artillery, etc. Let's be honest; the thing that takes Starcraft from a perfectly-polished-yet-nondescript-game to best-seller is the World it is set in (and associated art, story, and fluff that go along with it). How easy would it have been to change "Infantry" to "Space Marine"...."Helicopter" to "Landspeeder" .... "Missle Truck" to "Whirlwind"? I'm just saying, a little imagination goes a long way. In fact the lack of creativity has me thinking about ways to take this same UI and build it out for all kinds of different universes - a whole franchise of games that would sell well. I don't even need a Space Marine universe....fantasy or steampunk or many other things would be great too. All in all, however, the game is very enjoyable. I'll let you know how difficult it gets as I get further into it :). |
| I finally broke down and bought Portal this weekend. Originally, I had held off buying it because people told me that it was only 2 hours of gameplay, and that seemed quite short to me, for the money. But the more reviews I read (which I trust) the more I began to want to play it, especially when I was told how great the ending was. So yes, the game is short (I bought and completed it in one evening) but all the reviews are correct: the game is amazing, and as Zero Punctuation said, the ending is balls-tighteningly fantastic. There is so much I could say about it, but I won't because I want to make sure you've played portal first because one of the sheer beauties of the game is that I didn't know anything about it going in beyond the central game mechanic (...of creating portals). So, here is a poll. Let me know who is worthy to view my portal thoughts. Poll #1116561 Portal Open to: All, results viewable to: All I have played Portal |
2 (20.0%)
sleepy – OCT 29, 2007 08:53 AM | I finished Half-Life 2: Episode Two on the weekend. And it is everything the reviews say. It's much better than Episode One, which seems rushed and half-complete by comparison. For starters, it's about twice as long. For seconds, they've introduced a new weapon and a number of new enemies. For thirds, all the environments are completely new, and yet feel perfectly a part of the same universe (in episode one, none of the environments were new). And for fourths, it covers a surprising amount of story...more than you'd expect, and with the exact right amount of tease, payoff and foreshadowing for episode three. Valve has my official forgiveness for making me wait so long for this next chapter. Because you have a companion with you almost the entire time (Alyx), the dialogue suffers a bit, because she's constantly giving you hints. In the same way that the game used during the "Follow Freeman!" chapter of the first game. During that sequence, when you have rebellion fighters following you into battle, you could almost imagine their sergeant briefing them beforehand: "...and that's why, despite his extensive combat experience, you should be nagging Gordon Freeman to reload his weapon, constantly." In this episode, Alyx says similarly annoying things to you: "Unlock that door, Gordon!" I think they erred slightly too far on the side of caution there. It would have been nice to leave the puzzles more up to the player. But really, this quibble is but a drop in the bucket for a game which is implanted firmly in my top five video games of all time. |
HL2: Episode 2 is just as awesome as you might expect:  When it came out, I decided to play through the game again, from the beginning, pausing for the extra "Lost Coast" level, then through episode one, and then move on to episode two. I'm not finished two yet, but man ... as I've said before, the art direction is one of the most amazing things about the game. I love just running around, taking in these environments. It's the only game that has made me feel like I'm in a movie. Extremely satisfying. |
| Oh, something else I meant to add: on the level design - the way in which they always let you know where to go next is extremely well-done also. There is one sequence where you work your way up into an apartment building. There are a bunch of people standing in a room staring out the window. You enter the room and one of them says "Oh! Oh thank God. I thought you were one of them. It's just getting worse and worse. Look." You walk over to the window and look down into the street. A tank pulls up and you see soldiers jump out and run into the room across the street. Then suddenly, someone runs into the room and shouts "They're coming. Quick, head for the roof!" Then you have to run for it. Throughout this sequence, you are filled with an overriding sense of panic and chaos. You run through halls, and take shortcuts through different apartments, and there are people running every which way. Yet somehow, you always know where to go next, while at the same time you're filled with the sense that you really are running for your life through a building where you have many choices. Again. Phenomenal work. The game deserves all of the accolades it received. |
| One of the things I love most about Half-Life 2 is the art direction. It's phenomenal work. In particular the sets involving the city. It does what good art direction should do, which is to both flush out and complement the story, both at the same time. ( If you've played the game, you know what I'm talking about. But if you haven't, here's my sales pitch: ) |
| I must say, Baldur's Gate II is an excellent game. KOTOR was more accessible to the non-RPG player...it still used D20 rules, but you could ignore them mostly, plus the Star Wars world is a little more user-friendly than the Forgotten Realms world, I think. Actually, I was a little wary about playing a game in Forgotten Realms since I've read so many books in that world, and even gamed in it a few times (in my very small amount of D&D playing). I'm quite familiar with the world, or parts of it anyway, but I have to say that they make very good use of it. And some of the character interactions are more complex than any relationship you'll find in a Drizzt book. You have several romantic plotlines you can pursue - the one I chose was with an evil dark elf female who totally runs hot and cold. One minute she's coming on to you, you have sex with her, then the next morning she totally disdains you, calls you disgusting, only to come running back a few days later. It's funny. ( pulp fantasy literature talk ) |
