Game Curmudgeons

Remember that giant disappointed feeling you had after that big Capcom announcement was Lost Planet 2?

Remember how you wanted Marvel Vs Capcom Vs SNK? Well, you’ll still be wanting that, but at least you won’t be paying $50 for Marvel Vs Capcom 2 now! It’s set to release this summer on XBLA and PSN. The game is going to be based off the Dreamcast version, which had better assets (apparently better than the system could display, says one Capcom employee) and smoother play. Full HD graphics and online play are promised, as well as the 50 character roster. No word yet on any additions, but don’t count out Capcom’s love of selling us more parts to games we already bought.

Kotaku has said the game is priced at $15, which would be a hell of a deal considering the going rate for the discs, but like everything Kotaku, a grain of salt is advised.

Teaser trailer at Marvel.com

So, how does the followup to the still spectacular Escape From Butcher Bay hold up?

Pretty well, overall. The tone is different than the previous game, and there’s more focus on action than expected. If you encounter someone who’s not locked away from you, well, you won’t be chatting. Everyone is to be considered hostile, and there are more direct action setpieces rather than stealth oriented sections. Assault really is the proper term, all the combat ability learned in the first game will be tested in this one.

Rather than a few prisoners and guards, Dark Athena is a ship mostly filled with drones, followed by the occasional mercenary. Instead of the many areas Riddick could move about freely before, there are mostly tight areas with less shadow and more enemies. Much more careful observation and precise timing is needed, and combat can turn bad in an instant. There are quite a few areas where moving ahead fast will result in a cheap death, be it by turret or an enemy sitting around the corner, though fortunately the game saves automatically often to minimize the annoyance.

Unfortunately, where Butcher Bay often gave players a choice of how to handle a situation, Dark Athena will demand gunplay, stealthy assassination, or a straight brawl in a corridor where you can only  go forward or back and have no shadow to hide in. Six times in a row. I don’t think that last part is an exaggeration, sadly, and after that set of melee brawls, there’s rarely another for the rest of the game, which is a shame as the gunplay is still functional, but far from standout, and occasionally it’s just frustrating. I have to call out one particularly rough section where Riddick uses a drone gun on an elevator platform, but can’t duck down for cover. Players are forced to memorize where enemies are going to be as the elevator descends, and just start shooting before they get hit too much. I think I spent 20 minutes on a one minute sequence, which is incredibly far from fun. Combat isn’t the game’s strong suit, and Butcher Bay mostly saved it as what happened when you screwed up and got spotted, here it’s the expected method.

Despite the lackluster shooting, the game hasn’t lost the sense of tension, stalking, hunting, and very narrow escapes when a section opens up. An early area has some ten to fifteen drones in a cargo bay, but the patrol routes and tricky shadows make it feel like there’s a solid 50 of them, waiting for you to screw up, and it forces some hard choices. Leaving drones alone means they can come find you, but they’re still looking in the dark. If they find a dead one, the flashlight comes on, meaning there’s one less drone searching but that shadow can disappear. Same goes for shooting out lights later on in the game. It’s a new place to hide, but if the mercs get suspicious, it’s flashlights, which present dangers all their own.

Credit goes to the AI here, though, even in combat. While enemies won’t sit still by any means once engaged, they do tend to suppress areas they’ve seen the player in, and react properly to light and sound disruptions. Putting down a lot of fire from behind cover, then sneaking over to another position can result in getting beside or behind the enemy, and allow them to be killed easily, one at a time. And once the AI is hunting the player, it seems to hunt intelligently, checking behind barriers and around corners often enough, rather than blindly moving forward.

The game’s style is still very much Riddick, an artistic bullseye. Dark, dingy setpieces, gritty areas, intimidating enemies, lots of blood. There’s plenty of horrorshow to go around, as there should be. The sound is top notch as well, solid sounding guns, great clashes in melee combat, and once again, EXCELLENT voice-work, even the grunts. While the levels may not be very fun to play through in some spots, they all seem real, no cases of “Come on, this only happens in video games” bring players out of it. It’s a great success, thematically.

There’s a definite pacing issue, unfortunately, as the game shoots through the first section, drags horribly through the middle with occasional bursts of movement, then spends about spectacular fifteen minutes in the third act with, sadly, a VERY disappointing end boss. There’s a distinct lack of the slower, nearly RPG style sections that came before as well, which served to set the slow, deliberate pace of the prior game between fast action sequences, and a lot of character and setting is lost to that. Players don’t feel like part of the world around them this time, simply an intruder. Which they are, in all fairness.

The level design doesn’t really help the case. While it’s realistic enough (okay, one exception, but a minor one), it’s not fun often enough. The early areas feature a lot of backtracking, the later areas are a little too open with no hint of where to go or what to do. And late in the game, cheap kill traps start showing up which can result in a few controller tosses.

Despite all the complaints, Dark Athena isn’t a bad game by any means, it’s really good when it comes together, but it’s got the feel of the middle child in a trilogy. It never really starts or ends, the climactic moments generally aren’t, and it seems to be setting up for something really big to come next. Hopefully something that won’t be so linear and will have a few more ways to go about the hunt, like the first game, instead of deciding how it wants you to handle an area for you.

Chronicles of Riddick:Assault on Dark Athena gets 3.5 out of 5 canes. It’s a very good game that has moments of greatness, but is often down by weak level design and pacing, and inevitable comparisons to the prior installment. Fortunately enough, buying Dark Athena gets Butcher Bay, which is still a 5 of 5 game. Just think of it as an expansion pack, it even adds multiplayer like those used to!

Got three hours?

Play Wanted!

Okay, it might be around four or five, but I doubt it. There are a few points where players will have a challenge, one point where they’ll actually get stuck, and plenty they’ll move through fast after one or two repeats, maybe. It’s far from a hard game, though several points hop off the difficulty curve a bit.

So, Wanted takes place at some point after the movie, presumably some point in the comic books, minus the racism, pornography, and hatred of the comic book form and audience, which is probably for the best lest the ESRB’s rating skyrocket.

The game is a fairly straightforward third person shoot ‘em up, with players moving between cover, firing off shots to suppress enemies, curving bullets, and shooting other bullets out of the air in slow motion.

Okay, that does deserve some explanation, doesn’t it?

Wanted’s hook is primarily that bullets don’t have to fly in a straight line, you’re just programmed to believe they do. So while you and an enemy are sitting behind very comfortable cover, unable to get a straight shot at each other, you can hold the curved shot button, pick yourself an arc that wraps around a few obstacles, and bam, bullet meets enemy. In gameplay terms, it means when there’s too damn many enemies and they’re too hard to hit, you can take a few shots and maybe eliminate some of them safely, or aim for a conveniently explosive barrel, fire extinguisher, etc.

Beyond that, there’s slow motion abound. The game’s focus is on cover and moving between it, with quickmove functions built in for nearby cover. Players can also choose a special quickmove, which fires up slow motion during the transition and gives a little time to take down exposed enemies on the way. Outside of that, there’s rail-shooteresque sequences that would likely be a quick-time event in any other game. Wanted chose to just slow it down, let players aim for the bullets coming at them themselves, and not have to “PRESS X TO NOT DIE”, which works out very well.

Aside from slow motion, the game keeps a fast pace with extremely short breaks between the action. There’s almost no time lost to looking for the right way to go, and puzzles just don’t happen beyond “Which gas canister can I shoot to cause the biggest chain reaction?” It’s very straightforward action with lots of enemies who don’t stand a chance through a nice variety of environments, and it stays fun for the most part, if not terribly deep.

Wanted gets 4 out of 5 canes-A great action game that’s far too short, but easily worth a replay, and this could be the start of a great series of games.

Butcher Bay is a tough game on normal difficulty. It’s fairly punishing, sets up a few nasty ambushes, and getting careless can be trouble.

Dark Athena is plain hard. Butcher Bay is training for it, no doubt. While the first has you dealing with prison scrubs and some guards, the latter has you taking on a ship full of mercs, drones, and way way more difficult to hide and navigate in areas. The perpetually dark areas of the prison are no more, instead one must plan ahead, get a better view of an area, and move fast.

I’m not terribly far in, but as a direct sequel, I’d call it a huge success for how it expands on what players had to do before in a way that feels appropriate to the new environment.

Okay, I haven’t actually played Dark Athena yet, but I’ve spent all day playing Butcher Bay.

I woke up at 6 am or so. My copy arrived at noon. It’s now 4 am, and minus 3 hours or so of break time, it’s all been Riddick.

While it has a few small technical issues (occasionally an enemy is hard to hear when speaking, sometimes a little bit of polygonal overlap shows on models), the gameplay is superb, the presentation excellent, the story intense, and the acting great. Butcher Bay itself is definitely a 5/5 game. More detail to come.

Okay, I have to say one thing before I start this.

I want House of the Dead 1 on a new freakin’ console already. My Saturn lightguns just don’t work anymore. Alright? Seriously Sega, I’d better see HotD 4/1 coming up soon.

Now, on with the show.

Holy shit, Overkill is amazing. It’s the first game in the series that’s clearly developed by a western team (it’s a darker, grittier, splattier, though no less comical tone), and clearly developed for a console, not just a port. This does mean the game can be too easy, even in the hard mode, but it’s also REALLY god damn fun and puts some more detail on the character. Oh, and a lot more cussing that wouldn’t fly in arcades. And nudity. Really! And it’s all in a Wii game somehow.

Now, I’m a long time fan of the House of the Dead series, I’ve probably spent a few hundred in arcades on the games. I’ve always enjoyed the campy style and the loose, rapid pace of the zombie blasting. It’s fun for everyone! But Overkill is a different beast. Perhaps the best way to put it is that it feels weightier, more serious (which it’s not at all, but it’s far less cartoony). Whereas previous games have been animated horror comedy, something out of an anime that shouldn’t take itself so seriously, Overkill is a very western affair, an NC-17 gorefest in a seedy theatre.

It’s obvious from the start, honestly. The game starts with scratched up logo reels and a credit roll over a pole dancer, with some funky audio matching the video. The start screen is initially an out of focus projection, and it just goes from there.

Levels begin (mostly, anyway) with a voiceover and what could easily be a movie trailer, often wonderfully profanity-laden and hilariously well voiced by a sinister sounding narrator. The trailer turns into cutscene and character interaction, advancing the surprisingly great plot (in the Snakes on a Plane way, at least). Blood, gore, comedy, sex, comedy, and solid stereotypical characters are presented right from the start, and they never stop. Dialog is ever present, constant smartass remarks whenever there aren’t gunshots, and often enough when there are. There’s rarely a moment that doesn’t have a sense of character, something said rarely for any genre, particularly rail shooters, but it’s true. You actually know who these people are, which can be wonderful and terrifying.

Overkill is all about the fun, and does some things I’m surprised took so long. Outside of the mediocre Carnevil, this is the first time I can think of a game with a zombie circus! Everyone loves shooting undead clowns, damn it! It’s just part of the spectacular presentation. Scratchy film grain, a camera that shakes with weapon recoil, and big chunks of enemies left on the floor. And blood splatters! Overkill makes a big leap forward in the blood department, it really is one of the messiest games I’ve ever played, going so far as to leave blood sprays on the wall behind enemies taken out close to one. Sure, Counter-Strike has done it forever, but when did a rail shooter? Not until now, that’s when, and it’s a great touch. Seeing the remains of an ex-zombie on the bricks behind what used to be a head is so satisfying.

Satisfaction is exactly the feeling the game at large leaves players with. It’s a reasonable length, clearly intended to be on a console and it takes its time as such to build longer levels with more to discover than a pure arcade game would allow for. Persistent rewards certainly aid the cause, as players unlock more music, art, and of course, guns, as they play. Every completed level is rewarded with some cash, used to buy weapons and improve already owned ones. Since players can replay anything already finished, there’s plenty of time and ability to stockpile cash, eventually resulting in some truly devastating arsenals, culminating in two-player dual wield modes with automatic shotguns and assault rifles decimating entire rooms of enemies in three shots or less.

It’s as great as it sounds. Overkill takes everything to an extreme and frankly to places you never expected to go on the Wii. Honestly, it took me to places I wouldn’t expect to go on film, and that’s just fine.

Overkill does, by the way, take a few chances and change up the formula a bit. Traditionally rail shooters have four or five lives on the high end, one being lost with each hit, occasionally restored by a medkit. In this case, players get actual health bars which are replenished often via medkits in game. Some attacks will take off a small amount, some a large amount, rather than the old 1:1 system. It helps to really make some enemies seem like the greater threat they should, and forces players to prioritize targets by more than simple proximity.

The continue system has also had an overhaul. The main mode, Story Mode, features unlimited continues at the cost of half the player’s points (which is more important than it sounds, as those points equal precious money). Director’s Cut, the hard mode, features only three continues as well as more zombies and areas (yep, it’s all sorts of deleted scene glory), but more powerful guns to buy as well, and faster earned money. Honestly, neither mode is particularly hard, but that’s in keeping with the overall feel of the game. Overkill isn’t made to gulp quarters like the rest of the series, it’s made to take players on a bloody ride through a zombie apocalypse, and it does that well.

House of the Dead:Overkill gets 5 out of 5. Completely, utterly brilliant, tons of fun. A little too easy, and an occasional framerate hitch, but damn it, it’s incredibly fun and the content is golden. Overkill aims high and scores a headshot.