Game Curmudgeons

I don’t like sports games. I don’t like sports. Or reviewing sports games for that matter.

Well, as far as sports and the games go, there are two exceptions to each. Boxing and Fight Night Round 3 hit the spot for me. And so do hockey and NHL 08.

It’s hard to put too much description into a sports game review, admittedly. It’s hockey. It’s really good hockey, with a lot of options.

I’m going to assume you know how to play hockey. If you don’t, you’ll learn, because I’m not going to take the time to explain that the game is basically two teams trying to slap and object with sticks into a net. Okay, I just did. Done. Onward with the worst review ever.

NHL 08 handles mostly on the analog sticks. Left stick covers the body, and the stick handling is on the right. The system responds well to pressure, with a full 360 degrees of movement and varying intensities to boot. Light pressure results in slow movement, or a stick moved ever so slightly in the direction pressed. This means players can make gentle movements and truly maneuver across the ice, deftly weaving between defenders, and puck handling is tremendously improved, especially in regards to dekes. Subtle movement now is given its proper place on the ice, and it’s wonderful.

The rest of the game is on triggers. Passes, fancy maneuvers, poke checks, and changing the controlled player, all of those are on the back. Nothing essential to gameplay(just helpful) is on the face buttons, or d-pad. For those who want to get deeper, the d-pad allows manual line changes , and the face buttons change the offensive/defensive strategy, or hook/tie-up players, or slash/start fights. Seeing as those buttons are more likely than not resulting in a visit to the penalty box, they’re not used often, and the placement is just fine. Out of the way enough to not get hit accidentally, close enough to smack someone in the face with a stick when it’s deserved. Or not. Whenever you feel like it, really.

The on-ice gameplay is excellent. It’s not perfect hockey, obviously, little details aren’t present yet, but it’s by far the most authentic experience that won’t require you putting on skates and colliding with people. The players all are modelled very well and are extremely recognizable, particularly for some of the…less charismatic skaters. Hockey isn’t a game for the beautiful. The AI does a spectacular job learning what you do in a game, where you tend to skate, how you pass, where you shoot from, and will counter. NHL 08 really raises the bar on sports AI, and adaptability is key.

Between the ice, you can do fuck all and opt to just play quick matches, or something that matters, mostly in career or creation mode. Creation mode gives infinite points and leeway to create a customized player(stats, equipment, everything but looks really), or create a custom team by setting colors on several models of RBK Edge gear(the official new uniform system for the NHL) , then drafting players to the team within the salary cap. The team can be played in career mode(though another team must be dropped), or quick offline games.

The meat of the game is, of course, said career mode, which lasts for a decade. In that time you’ll (hopefully) win all sorts of trophies, create some great players, win a few stanley cups, and generally beat some asses. Trading players, managing lines and rosters, and editing plays for custom teams is the summary of what players will do when not on the ice, and doing it properly will make or break a season. Beyond that, setting training regimens, managing the budget, and just keeping the team happy will be the focus off-ice, to improve performance on-ice and win more games.

The online gameplay matches that of the offline, with updated rosters to match current trades, and player leagues, but it never surpasses offline gameplay, at least one on one. Online co-op, however, is great, though it should be known I have a soft spot for co-op in general.

The game is simply good. Good graphics, great audio presentation, from the yells on ice to the commentary, meaty thuds and smacked pucks, with a few yelps and grunts in between. The motion is fluid to match, and it all flows extremely well.

There is, unfortunately, one huge annoyance. EA Trax. Hockey games, sports in general, should not be filled with emo or indie rock. Hip-hop, hard rock, punk rock, those all work for sports, but not emo or indie. Luckily, one can turn the music off, or play his/her own.

That aside, the rest of the game is strong. Graphics can be better, but they’re pretty good, the audio is great, and the game is really, really fun, even if not the deepest thing in the world. It’s a major evolution in terms of hockey games, even from last year’s very impressive NHL 08, and it’s been very much needed in a genre sorely lacking.

NHL 08 gets 4 out of 5 canes. It doesn’t excel in every area, but it’s all good, and the on-ice action is amazing. Turn off the EA Trax, turn up the DethAlbum, and show someone the glass, up close and personal.

Is it too early to say “Holy shit wow”?

The Witcher is an RPG which drips atmosphere like nobody’s business, with great character design and some really great systems. Great graphics, an involving combat system(no more click and wait, for maximum effect, players will need to press the attack with good timing, maneuver themselves into optimum position, and good use of magic), and a hell of a story. Which isn’t surprising, given the extreme amount of source material to draw from.

It’s hard to say a lot surprisingly, as the game is just plain good. Even the voice acting is solid.

It’s premature to judge, but if you’re a fan of old school CRPGs with depth that doesn’t allow you to become the alpha and omega, and has real consequences for your actions, but has a truly modern method and responsiveness, there’s a good chance this game is for you. More to come after a few more days of obsessive play.

I just woke up to find a lot more mail than I normally would, failure notices, and spam blockers. Looks like someone’s been spoofing our public addresses for PayPal phishing attempts.

If you’ve come here that way, we’re sorry for the inconvenience, but there’s not much we can do about it yet. However, if you forward us the source of any e-mail you’ve gotten(headers in tact please!), maybe we can use that information to help track the culprit down, and, of course, sue the shit out of him.

Again, sorry for the problem. We hope you’ll stay and enjoy our site anyway, despite the poor introduction. And if you get anything else from them, please let us know.

I think Project Gotham Racing 4 can be summarized in the wise words of a penguin.

“Slide!”

Lots of that going around, technically called drifting. It’s pretty, it’s usually fun, and it’s how you get better cars and win races. If that’s your bag, well then here you go, get PGR 4. For the rest of us…

PGR4 is the Xbox 360 racer which walks the line to varying degrees of success between simulation and arcade racing. In a sim racer, for example, you won’t be pulling most turns at 65 MPH, sliding the whole way. In an arcade racer, you won’t be bothering to hit the brakes and slide at all. Yet here PGR4 sits, with real cars and motorcycles filling out the roster, performing beyond the limits of reality while managing to be accurate relative to each other. It provides a technical challenge and test of the reflexes, as well as the cojones to do 234 miles per hour on a motorcycle power by a jet turbine(yes, that means the MTT Superbike is in the game).

It’s a formula that can be a lot of fun, and the learning curve isn’t too bad. The cars players start with control easily, and later cars drift all over the place and can be very difficult to handle, but can give the best times and the most points in the game(known as, ugh, kudos), which are used to buy tracks, more vehicles, and the occasional special feature. The early stages of career mode, and lower ratings of cars, feel like a very long training exercise in a way, but they’re a lot of fun anyway. Courses range from the overly-technical to practically straight runs, allowing for most cars and bikes to have a well-suited stage.

Most sets of stages in career mode, however, will vary too much to make a particular car or bike suited toward it, particularly in Hotshot or Masters tournaments. To make it worse, at that point the best way to describe the AI is “a bunch of unrelenting dickheads who don’t care if they win as long as you lose.” The AI in Masters levels crashed into walls more than any Amateur rank AI did. And it happened to do it right in front of me all too often, blocking me thoroughly for precious seconds. In a car, there were countless times it just served to muscle me off the road, or on a bike, simply slam into me until I fly off.

I can’t complain too much, though, as up until that point, it was pretty damn fun, though the game’s difficulty rankings jump tremendously. There’s no real curve between the point where a player wins every competition blindfolded and stuck in first gear on easy, and can come in somewhere better than dead last on normal. It seems entirely likely that players will stay for a tremendously long time in the difficulty they began with.

Multiplayer mode is simple, but good. No surprise really. Take the cars purchased online, race them against other players. It’s certainly fun, but it doesn’t stand out against the career mode particularly, aside from seeing more cars and playing more tracks with different qualities than career mode has, but nothing that can’t be done in arcade mode. Since all the cars have default paint sets, there’s not a huge variety. There are also patterns which can be applied to cars and manipulated to an extent(colors, angle, position and width/length), but no originals are in game, making the ability to show cars off nullified.

Graphically, the game is good. The cars are are very well modeled, and all have a brilliantly reproduced dash console. There are, unfortunately, a few small issues with them. The accuracy can, at times, result in them being effectively invisible. Some night races, or cars with exceptionally dark tint, for example, will have completely obscured gauges. Sometimes wheels get in the way as well, and while you can look around in the car, you can’t actually move your head around. A few cars also have visibility issues inside, notably a few high end Ferraris which have short windshields. Limited vertical visibility can end up feeling claustrophobic in the game, and really cause problems on tracks with lots of hills. Motorcycles suffer from having instruments at different heights, relative to the driver’s viewpoint, which can be either entirely in view and obstructive, or totally unseen. Generally it means there’s too much time spend looking down on bikes, or just hoping for an angle in car, to effectively work manual transmission. While all other modes have a perfectly effective HUD, with a completely unobscured tachometer, the option to turn it on or off in car is sorely lacking, and leaves players trying to operate by sound alone too often, rather than look around at high speed with sharp turns approaching. It’s also almost required, in later stages, that players manually shift to get the quick acceleration needed to win. The game does something great in this regard, allowing players to shift up or down even in automatic mode(where, rather than an actual automatic transmission, the gear is simply shifted automatically), but the HUD issues persist obviously.

All the graphical prettiness with cars comes at a price. Sure they shine nicely, but damage? Extremely limited. Windshields crack, mirrors can get knocked off, and cars scrape up. That’s it. After slamming into a wall at 150 MPH, I expect some fucking damage. It’s worth noting some of those crashes weren’t my fault, but the fault of totally missing frames. There’s some major issues in large races, 6 or more racers can really kill things, and if 8 show up, expect some major trouble, be it offline or on. Nothing says fun like losing a race at the last second because you can’t see what’s happening. On a last little nitpick, the mirrors make everything like very horizontally compressed.

The game’s sound shines, fortunately, and doesn’t stutter. Cars sound brilliant, especially sitting on the inside or on top of a motorcycle. There’s a solid enough audio quality to shift by sound if one is so inclined, and no vehicles sound alike. Plenty of gearheads should be able to pick out just what’s coming up on them, and what they need to do in response to the situation. Too bad the game’s music blows, and you’ll need your own custom soundtrack, which can make hearing cars and gears a bit difficult. My Chemical Romance and some incredibly repetitive techno are the order of the day here, and I’m wondering who thought “Let’s get some music tips from EA!” at Bizarre Creations. When you can hear what you’re driving though, it’s superb.

Complaints aside, it’s a fun game generally, it just gets old fast. Some things it does very right, like dynamic weather, which can mean a track goes from dry to slick and wet over the course of a few laps, or heavy fog fortunately lifting. But that leads to an issue, as some tracks and championships are way, way too damn long, notably one in Europe which is a solid 7-10 minute lap. Even the longest of Longcats will find it to be a bit much.

Still, the game kept me quite interested for a good week, which is more than most racing games ever manage. The variety was a bit lacking, despite the different event types(races, point challenges, cone sprints, races with special conditions that still boil down to going really fast and not crashing) and vehicles, especially as motorcycles feel so damn gimped by the end of things. Until the AI starts, for lack of a better term, cheating(all AI does it, this does it visibly), it’s fun. It’s a reasonable challenge usually, and the sense of speed is usually there. Moments of major framerate drop or the AI will really bring it down though, and the fact the urban races all look very samey and hollow(a classic problem for racing games, making a city look alive), only broken up by the occasional actual race track in the middle of nowhere. But hey, if it was no good, I wouldn’t have had such a horrible case of throttle claw after spending an hour trying to set a speed record on the game’s test track. Yeah, throttle claw is, it turns out, way way worse than any DS claw, and that includes the original model.

Project Gotham Racing 4 gets 3.5 out of 5 canes. It’s got a few major issues which could have been fixed, but is really good game, and for racing fans is going to be a sure thing. More customization, a non-shitty soundtrack, and some polish really could have boosted the score, as well as a bit more variety and balance.

Half-Life 2: Episode 2 is a lot of fun, if you liked Half-Life 2 and Episode 1. If you didn’t like those or weren’t looking for more of them, almost exactly, you won’t much like Episode 2. To be fair, if you weren’t looking for more of HL2, you’re probably broken and wouldn’t be buying this in the first place.

EP2 starts you have just like every other Half-Life game, be it an expansion or not, with no weapons. It’s become almost a standard in FPS games these days to start you off with no weapons and slowly build up your inventory until you are your own armory. EP2 keeps up that tradition…along with almost every other tradition now common to Half-Life 2. That’s really what EP2 is, everything you’ve already done, repackaged into another adventure. Players get odd messages from G-Man, drive over long stretches of road interspersed with road blocks they need to solve to continue, find all kinds of zombies, and have Alyx tagging along.

Of course, I say that’s fucking great. It’s more of Episode 1, the distilled version of the original game. Now before I get all “this is great because it’s exactly the same” up in here, it’s not really the same. The annoying scientist from the first one is back (I still don’t know why anyone puts up with him), Dog is even cooler, there are now underground caves, you get a completely different car decked out with new gadgets (which is still hard to drive) and get to meet a few new bad guys. It’s pretty sweet.

The graphics are more of the same, generally, though some underground caves stand out. And while I say more of the same, they still look pretty good even by today’s standards. Nothing fell short, and in many parts of the wilderness areas I was pretty enamored of how good it looked.

The sound and AI are at the same stellar level they were in the previous games. I still love stopping and chatting with the soldiers and listening to them debate silly things. I still can’t get enough of the noise Striders make when they destroy buildings.

The attention to detail is still pretty high, though a few the situations you get into felt more contrived than previous games. Instead of having to fix this bridge to get through here, you’re now ambushed and have to beat the troops, destroy a power generator and then fix the bridge (purely hypothetical situation). Being ambushed in the middle of nowhere feels less like something that could have happened, and more like something staged. Maybe that’s just me, but I got that feeling a lot from Episode 2. It’s similar to  how Shigeru Miyamoto develops the mechanics of a Mario game, then develops the game to fit around that. Not a horrible thing, but it results in less of fluid feeling than the game could have.

Despite the nitpicks, I loved it. Some of the areas felt staged and some there wasn’t a lot different between this game and the previous games, but it sure was a blast to play. Except the driving. To quote a friend, it still feels like you’re a midget with blinders on while in a car. However, at no point did I play just to finish the game, I played because I wanted to solve the challenges presented to me. I played because wanted to see what happened in the story. And of course, I played because G-man told me to.

Half-Life 2: Episode 2 gets 4 out of 5 canes because it’s more of the same and if you didn’t like the others or weren’t left wanting with Episode 1, you probably won’t like this one. The tunnel sections were a bit weak, but the rest of the game more than made up for it.

There has never before been a multi-player game so god damn fun. Yes, that includes random public servers. I’m going to make it very clear from the start here; I’ve not truly enjoyed multiplayer gaming since 2000, with some Counter-Strike and Half-Life Deathmatch action. When I got back into the MP scene in 2002, it had changed. Rather than the nerd filled servers I loved who needed to know how to configure TCP/IP settings to get to the game, any idiot with a few bucks could get online and into my gaming. Or with his mom’s credit card. My tactical battle or just for fun free-for-all was filled with douches who run around like crackmonkeys and say things like “fuk u nub” and throw out racial epithets. Of course, fulfilling any sort of team role was gone.

Team Fortress 2 has changed that. Asshats? Once in a while. But Valve has made a scoring system that discourages mavericks, and encourages proper teamwork and balance. Hell, an unbalanced team vs. a balanced one WILL lose. If you get greedy, you don’t win. It’s about time a game figured out how to do that.

The basics of TF2 are extremely simple. 9 classes, with their own strengths and weaknesses, are selectable. Some are suited toward defense, some offense, some both. 6 maps are present at this point, all of which are excellent. Every map has two teams vying for opposing objectives. One is a capture the flag style map, where players retrieve an item from the enemy base, and bring it back to theirs. Other modes are control points, where players must stay in a small area for a certain amount of time to take ownership of it. Those come in a variety of forms, but the basics are the same. Sometimes a map has one team purely defending and one attacking; others have the control points up for grabs that both teams are after. Every map is different and plays well. The maps are, especially by today’s standards, small. They’re also fast, easily learned, and full of alternate routes and choke points. Rather than the half-hour slogs of the modern Battlefield game, for example, a scout, the game’s fastest class, can cross most maps in one minute. Slower classes need all of two in many cases. The action only stops when you die, and then only for up to 20 seconds, depending on your performance and your teams. A team or player doing better results in faster respawn times. The mechanic keeps the action coming in waves, which helps to somewhat organize teams without feeling artificial.

Classes are distinct in the methods needed to play them effectively(not to mention rack up the points), but the curve surprisingly gentle. Most of the time, it’s a case of learning the weapon ranges and speeds. Rockets fly far but slow, shotguns have a light spread but are only effective at close to medium range, and flamethrowers are useless beyond point blank, but at that point, nothing survives. Medics, on the other hand, don’t do a lot of damage ranged, though their melee(and all melee attacks in TF2, really) is very effective. However, they rack up the points for healing teammates, granting temporary invulnerability, and whenever they’re healing someone, they get points for a kill assist. Proper teamwork between any classes can get that bonus too, where one player gets points for helping another with a kill. Like most everything in the game, it aids the teamwork immensely, and helps prevent maverick players from being a problem.

The game’s style is fast paced and insane. Giant explosions, spies wearing paper masks to blend in with their enemies, and medics that use guns to heal people are the order of the day. Ragdolls have never been used better in my opinion, with people routinely dropping off railings and sliding down stairs, or at points flying across a map from the combination of being stabbed in the back and blasted with a rocket.

The level of detail is insane, yet everything is amazingly simple. Every class has a very distinct silhouette, allowing instant recognition. The unique weapons every class gets, as well as a few secondaries that are shared, are clearly defined, so players know immediately what they’re up against. The system is incredibly effective and well designed. Characters all have a bit of a light halo effect, bringing them out against backgrounds, and simple, cartoonish shaders that give the game the look of a CGI movie, and the game’s brilliant simply adds to that. Particles and gibs galore, and a smooth motion to everything, particularly smoke trails and fire.

Weapons are all nice and shiny, and look very…unique. Each weapon is clearly recognizable as a certain basic kind of weapon, but looks highly customized. Flamethrowers using gas pump handles as triggers, for examples, or a belt fed sub-machine gun that fires hypodermic needles.

Little additions in the world make all the difference too. Lit signs pointing out directions to capture points or signs. Neon lighting an area. Blue bases tend to have cool colors and be made of stone or cement, where red bases are warm tones, often wooden in design. Little things, like a wire and a battery mounted to a blinking sign pointing to the battlements, add to the immersion and depth of the world. It’s a highly fictional, stylized world that manages to feel possible, despite the fact soldiers are launching themselves up in the air with their own rockets, or that scouts are jumping when they’re already in mid-air. The world has a real sense of self, with old, busted facades on the outside, and high tech spy bases inside.

Audio is a real treat too. While the game has the pre-requisite booms and gunshots, masterfully done, it’s the voices that truly bring things to life. Every character, every god damn one of them, is unique. They all have personalities which, while exposed in Valve’s clever “Meet the” series, come out in the middle of the game, depending on circumstances, or even at player command.

The days of every quick chat key(3 categories with 9 or 10 each) having the same voice are gone, completely gone, and even the information they present varies now. Anyone in voice range will not only see the basic message in their text block(be it “Incoming!” “Medic!” or “Spy!”), but they’ll hear it from that character. Each a different tone, a different accent. Australian snipers, Scottish demolitions experts, and large, Russian heavy weapons guys, and a medic who seems to have been trained by the SS, considering his demeanor and accent. Players can activate taunts as well, with animations unique to each weapon. But to truly add to the life, messages can differ if there’s a targeted player. Hitting the spy function will call out an appropriate class from the character. The soldier, for example, may yell “There’s a traitor among us!” in general, or if targeted, “That sniper’s not one of ours!”

Even in the middle of combat, the taunts and yells come out, prompted by clever AI which serves for create them depending on in-game conditions. Characters will yell if they’re on fire. Snipers have been known to thank people for standing still, HW guys revel in the sheer amounts of blood, and my personal favorite, the soldier has been known to yell, when on a rampage “If God wanted you alive, he wouldn’t have made me!” Throw in some pure Brooklyn smack talk from the scout, or maniacal laughter from the pyro, and everything comes alive. There is absolutely no multiplayer game that has ever managed such a level of depth to a world. No more generic characters with different guns, or slight cosmetic differences. No more clone armies. Sure, everyone within a class looks alike, but those classes are so unique it works with the game’s total look and feel of a demented cartoon. This is Pixar combined with Industrial Light and Magic, and a very, very large dose of PCP and roid rage, all perfectly streamlined thanks to an immensely talented team at Valve. Even the facial animation, which serves to match the taunts, works. Serious looks, excitement, desperation, or a complete psychotic break, are visible. Nothing serves as a warning better than a blood-splatter giant of a man with a huge open grin and bellowing laughter whose gun is the size of some of the smaller characters.

Feedback is constant in TF2. Encouragement abounds, in so many forms. Sure there are the vocal taunts, which are great. There’s also information about who killed you, where you are in the picture the game takes of the event, and notable things you did. It keeps track of your stats, telling you how many kills, how many captures, how many defenses, among many other stats. The best, perhaps, is the revenge system. Players who keep killing someone else without being killed in return will get bonus points and a message, for example, “ZekeDMS is DOMINATING wzrd!” But it goes both ways, the dominator gets an icon over his head to clearly mark him for revenge. Those frustrating losses wash away when the message “wzrd just got REVENGE on ZekeDMS!” pops up for all to see, and the points pop up with a bonus.

Damage is obvious when dealt, blood sprays, people fly from explosives, and pyros can set people ablaze. Critical hits show up too, which have a random element to them for the most part. Snipers always get critical hits for headshots, and spies get critical, always deadly hits, with a knife in the back. Other classes get random hits, and the odds increase depending on performance. Kill streaks, high scores, or defenses and captures, doing anything properly for the team, really, will increase the odds of a critical hit, which does massive damage and can let even the weakest offensive attacks become fatal to the toughest classes. A nice electric buzz, and a team-colored effect covers the projectile(s), as well as the words “Critical Hit!” in big green letters over someone’s head.

Just in case players are a bit confused, the voice of the overlord is always letting people know what’s going on, like when the intelligence(aka, the flag/briefcase) is being captured, a control point is in dispute, or any other key information. There’s a guide up pointing to the general location of the intel, or the capture progress of any points. It’s all very clear for new guys, and the situation is, at all times, obvious.

I really lack any complaints. Some would say there aren’t enough maps, but there are 6 really fucking good ones, as opposed to 20 maps that are good but people only play 2 of them. I think Valve knows all about that, what with Counter-Strike’s obsessive De_Dust playing, and every Team Fortress Classic server left being pure 2_fort. The game can run a little rough for some people, but the scalability of the Source engine is obscene, and any serious problems are rare. There are lots of players, there’s an easy learning curve and instant fun, with deeper tactics easily learned. The game balances offense and defense well, never leaving players feeling bored and useless in a fight, everyone matters. The game would be fun if it was red and blue stick figures, but the addition of actual characters, characters who have more personality than most of the squad mates in the modern team shooter(with exception for Republic Commando), and so many touches that make the world solid, it puts it completely over the top.

Team Fortress 2 gets five canes, and the golden cane which I just made up, but is going to be presented to games which are worthy of the top score and still a little more. Enjoy it, Valve.

Holy shit.

I know Prey tried to make a big deal about its portals. “Look, you can go back and forth in some places with pre-determined openings in the world! And our gravity is weird!” And they were fun at times, a good method of shuffling players around levels and letting enemies in.

It just doesn’t compare to making your own, though. It can’t.

And that’s what Portal is all about. Make holes in the reality and leap through them. The concept is simple, but the execution is amazing.

Portal is a simple puzzle game from a first person perspective that allows for creative genius in player methodology using momentum and the occasional crate. Players are given, after a few puzzles, a portal gun which opens blue portals. The other half of the portal, the orange one, opens on its own in the world or is triggered for several levels, until the player upgrades said portal gun, gaining total control over both ends. And the possibilities are damn near endless once players have both, and the ability to go just about anywhere from wherever they currently are. The basic mechanic is to open two ends of a portal, and go through it. And take other things through it. Or throw them there, or just guide their paths with the portal.

Good portal use can launch players and objects to insane distances, allow for instant travel across levels, and reach areas which would be completely out of reach to anything that doesn’t have wings. And that’s just the simple use.

It’s very simple, and it’s just far too fun. Portal completely avoids feature creep or overloading players. Things are, in Valve style, slowly introduced as needed, the player is trained, and then they’re used in some amazingly fun ways, and creative ways, that I won’t spoil due to the fact this would become less of a review and more of a walkthrough. So there. Really, all I can say is that it’s incredibly fun, and has some moments that will make you feel incredibly clever for working out a solution, especially once you encounter rooms where not all surfaces can hold portals, or there are many obstacles right in the way of what you’re trying to do.

Portal just stays extremely fun constantly, putting the player in a large test facility with an AI that is clearly not entirely sane, and has an obsession with cake. GLaDOS constantly talks to the players, informing them of the situation, congratulating them, taunting them. The writing for GLaDOS is, unquestionably, one of the funniest things I’ve experienced all year. Portal is by far the funniest game this year, and GLaDOS is right on track to end up on the list of all time great comic relief. Every bit of the sound and graphic presentations is perfect for the game. It’s all very immersive and consistent, really making players feel like they’re there. Graphically, the test chambers have a wonderfully sanitized look to them, with smooth white segmented walls and smooth glossy metals as the defining features. Most things, turrets, crates, and the portal gun, have a molded shiny look, which is absolutely perfect. The audio, parts of which come from Half-life 2 (appropriately, as some elements are shared), is wonderful and balanced just right. Sound effects are clear, and dialog can be heard perfectly well. This is the anti-Halo when it comes to sound-mixing. It all just works.

To say more is to give away a large amount of the game’s surprises, though I certainly don’t feel like I’m doing the game justice. It’s hard to say a lot. The game is short, 3 hours or so initially, with a much warranted playthrough for developer’s commentary. After that, advanced puzzles and bonus challenges will take up a significant amount of time and can be absolutely fiendish. I’ve gotten about 9 hours of play personally, even though the first play was only 3 hours. That alone speaks volumes about the quality.

Portal gets 5 canes. It’s pure, twisted genius of an incredibly creative sort. It’s part of the brilliant Orange Box package(Xbox 360 or PC), which you should have already, or can be bought separately for $19.99 on Steam. Do it. Now.  Portal gets a retroactive Silver Cane award. It would get the Golden Cane, but it’s just a little too short. If a bonus pack comes out, expect an upgrade.

I recently read this article on Next Gen and it got me thinking. After I stopped thinking how silly some of those rules were (don’t even get me started on peoples’ complaints about cut scenes), I started to think about what makes a good game. Yeah, I know, broad subject, but I think we can make this generic enough to pull important points from gaming in general, not from specific genres or titles. Fair warning, this is from a game player and armchair designer perspective, so while I believe in it whole heartedly, you have to take what works for you from it.

Let’s start with what the original article covers(for the most part).

Usability. What does that mean in terms of video games? For me, it means I don’t have to think of the interface. I don’t have to try to figure out what the designers of the game were thinking when they created it. I don’t have to remember what the red bar, blue bar, and green bar mean depending because it’s obvious. I don’t have to learn their lingo or that they like shift-right-click to select things. As a matter a fact, there should be multiple ways to do the same thing, because not everyone is going to attempt to do things the same. Blizzard does this really well. I can think of three different ways to cast healing spells in WoW off the top of my head, and I’m sure there are more. That’s what I mean. Make the interface intuitive, allow the user to do things the way they want, not just the way you want. It’s of huge importance and most companies (both in consoles and on PC) don’t get it.

Moar! »

It’s now official.

Sonic The Hedgehog is going to be in Super Smash Brothers Brawl for the Nintendo Wii, continuing the rivalry started in the 16-bit era and recently taken head to head in Sonic and Mario at The Olympic Games.

Solid Snake AND Sonic the Hedgehog? Nintendo, you’ve outdone yourself on this.

Mike Hayes, President and COO of SEGA Europe had the following to say:

“Its amazing that after all these years we get to see these two much loved characters compete against each other in another fantastic title. Bringing Mario and Sonic together again underlines the continuing partnerships between Nintendo and SEGA, and produces another industry first for our two companies.”

Super Smash Brothers Brawl is currently slated to hit the Wii sometime in early 2008.

For more information on this entry, visit Sonic’s entry, at the Super Smash Brothers Dojo. And for a bit more, here’s Sonic’s character trailer. Apparently, he’s brought his music along with him, and it looks like Super Sonic will be featured in the game. I’ll speculate it happens if he collect a star, but perhaps he’ll have some special conditions of his own with that. Chaos emeralds are visible around him in the trailer at transformation, and there’s a Sonic the Hedgehog spring-bumper shown as well. Hopefully they’ll bring more Sonic elements into the Nintendo world.

Portal-Short, super sweet, incredibly funny. Like TF2 it drips with style, and despite the short length of the first run-through, it features a good number of bonus levels, AND a second set of advanced test chambers once players finish the first The first playthrough for me clocked in at 3 hours, and was pure fun.

The early verdict is if you enjoy puzzle games, you absolutely need this.

More to come after I play some Episode 2, and advanced/bonus puzzles. As usual, Valve has chosen to include some great developer’s commentary, accessible after players finish a section.