Game Curmudgeons

I admit, as much as I love my Wii, I don’t get a lot of time on it. It’s always one of those things where the potential is so much greater than the actual results, especially with third party offerings. Combined with a ton of shovelware for the expected “kids have no taste, grandmothers don’t know better” market I’m always wary.

Sin and Punishment:Star Successor completely bucks the trend.

The name, of course, screams “weird Japanese RPG”, and while it’s definitely got the first two parts covered, the last couldn’t be further from reality. S&P:SS is apparently the sequel to Sin and Punishment. I know, shocking. It was a Nintendo 64 title released only in Japan, and recently enough via WiiWare in the US, and that’s all I know about it. That’s all that matters for backstory. What the game tells you is that you’re in the future, you’re under attack, and some bad people are after the girl who looks, but naturally isn’t, human. So you shoot them.

S&P:SS is a rare new entry into the behind the back shooter, one that never saw a lot of games even in its arcade heyday. All I can think of right now would be Cabal, Nam-1975, Dynamite Duke, and Blood Bros, maybe the Space Harrier games can count. The genre was and is obscure, partially due to being at home brutally punishing players, demanding quarters from them regularly, and this new entry is no exception.

Sin and Punishment demands a split focus of players, making it a demanding exercise to begin with. The player avatar is always on screen and under attack, making step one protecting yourself from damage. Step two, kill everything. Traditionally the cursor and player avatar have been linked on a joystick, but the Wii has either the option of playing a dual stick style, or the more natural analog+wiimote style. It’s the same core gameplay as before, with a spectacularly streamlined control mechanism. It lets players dodge and aim in different directions for once, something that always pulled the genre down.

But the developers, Treasure, love to kill their players, and they take advantage of the new options. Whereas old games of the genre only had movement left or right, this one eschews the Galaga slide for four axes of movement, each one essential to survival. There’s a helpful inclusion of a lockon mechanism, which keeps shots true to the target but lowers their power, allowing players to worry about surviving the assaults first and foremost. Melee attacks have been added in too, which both are powerful and essential to survival in many cases, and have the bonus of reflecting projectiles. Missiles and grenades can be reflected, Jedi style, wherever the player is aiming or to their locked on target for massive damage, but managing the maneuver is always a challenge when energy blasts are overwhelming the screen.

The game’s intro level is a gentle enough affair, intended to teach players the basics, and it does so effectively, only getting a little more difficult at the boss fight. As soon as that level ends, things get cranked up to “ridiculous” even on easy, with what feels like an absolute wall of enemies, gunfire from all angles, and constant danger. Even as a genre veteran, the end boss to level one took me a solid 20 minutes to beat. There are always patterns and weaknesses to bosses, particularly level end bosses, but figuring them out and exploiting them is a real challenge. The same tends to go for mid-bosses as well, of which there are plenty, and they reappear as normal enemies later as is the traditional way of the shooter.

Sin and Punishment:Star Successor is a rare on-rails run and gun affair, and it’s absolutely brilliant. The action is non-stop, the pace is undeniably frantic, and the challenge is massive. This is a game that truly takes advantage of the Wii’s mechanics. The only real problem I had with the game is setting up a good control scheme because there’s so much going on at once, and because the default zapper setup is geared toward a wiimote and nunchuck. Once that barrier is overcome it all becomes smooth, natural, and a ton of fun. Break out the PerfectShot, Zapper, or Clone Blaster, stand way too close to the TV, and feel time melt away as you end up back in a 90s arcade.

It’s a Wiio-Geo game, and I couldn’t be happier to have found it.

9/10

Reckless Squad was recklessly released.

The first release from D2P games takes a chance, eschewing the very concept of being a triple-A title from the start, opting for a simpler, fun experience. In some ways it succeeds, but it’s not without issues, some great, some small.

Reckless Squad is a convoy based RTS. Yes, a game built entirely on escort missions, traditionally the worst, or at least most difficult, part of any game. It’s a concept that makes RTS fans hesitate, and Wing Commander veterans cry out in terror. Surprisingly enough, it’s been done here in a way that makes it enjoyable. At first.

It also might be necessary. Reckless Squad takes a lot of pride in being procedurally generated, and when single-player procedural generation is mixed with no goal but “Kill ‘em all”, it can get boring, fast (for those wanting to experience this firsthand, see Soldier of Fortune 2). Procedural generation lends itself to games where the idea is to survive, not to thrive, and Reckless Squad understands that. The convoy, really just a covered wagon that fell off the Oregon Trail, chugs right along obliviously, only slowed occasionally by magic. That’s not a bad thing in and of itself, because as long as it reaches the end of a map, it’s a success, on to the next level. It also forces players out of the old habits of clearing ahead, moving, stopping, clearing, moving, stopping, which is a recipe for tedium.

When it works, it’s fresh and exciting. There’s a thrill and a challenge to knowing that the units you have need to last for at least a few more levels, and a boss fight most likely. There’s tension in the decisions that have to be made on the fly. Clear a path ahead while there’s time? Leave troops near the caravan for a rear guard? Send a few into danger for a potentially critical treasure chest? Players have to think fast, because as said before, that caravan stops for nothing. Not you, not the enemy, and not to caulk the wagon and float across. Gaining and maintaining resources is critical, but it’s dictated by time and careful control of your units.

Maintaining that control is unfortunately where things tend to start to suffer. The player’s units just don’t listen. In a twist on the norm, where one complains about units that just sit around lazily, like goons in the basement, these units cause problems when they take the initiative. They run forward to enemies, they pick off what they see as easy targets, and they rain down fireballs anywhere that isn’t water. In most RTS games, that would be great, but in a game where the goal is to protect a convoy and units are limited, you need them to stick close and not draw extra attention. Even the mission modes fall victim to this where one actually is just tasked to kill everything. A careful pull honed by years of MMO experience turns into a horde of angry enemies, each one following its friend back to your carefully chosen “Take ‘em one at a time” point, and a quick slaughter of your forces often ensues.

Even more annoying is when a stealth unit runs ahead even as a battle rages around the caravan, picking a target in the middle of a group and ensuring its own demise. The newly alerted enemies just love run back to the caravan and overwhelm the surviving forces at that point, and the fun gives way to rapid annoyance. Once there, the lack of control over individual units combines in with a horrible lack of visibility and unit information. There’s no information per unit, only unit types, and the mass of green lifebars gives no feedback at all when a large group is engaged in a big ball of violence. Even worse is when the fragile units such as achers, mages, and rogues get in the mix. Archers haven’t ever heard of skirmishing it seems.

Another oddity of the game is that units seem to have a strong desire to only move in cardinal directions. Not always, but there’s an odd tendency toward moving only 8 ways. Occasionally a unit will pick a bit of an angle to get to an enemy, but that’s less common than one would expect, more common when intercepting an enemy (regardless of your desire for them to) than actually following a move order.

The annoyances continue to pile on, some major, some minor. The edgescroll is a pain in windowed mode, only reacting at the very, very far ends. There’s no option to switch whether or not the scroll is placed above the UI bar at the bottom, and the shift key is useless, instead relegating all functions of grouping and multiple unit selection to the crtl key. And for those who feel like avoiding the edgescroll, here’s hoping you’re left-handed. The game has a distinct lack of hotkeys, which would free WASD up for control, logically. It doesn’t. Instead, players are stuck with the arrow keys and numpad. Very inconvenient for a game controlled almost entirely by mouse.

When you get down to it, Reckless Squad just feels rushed. There’s typos everywhere, lots of dialogue and exposition that seem like awkward translations into English, despite the studio being Montreal based. There’s no real movement/aggression controls, units are in full aggro mode at almost all times. The controls are minimal, and the feedback virtually nonexistent. The AI is completely lacking, with no concept of retreat or point defense, the most important aspects of an escort. Selecting individual units is as much a challenge as any boss fight, and in the heat of battle, the non-standard controls are an absolute hindrance.

The good news is that most of the problems could be patched out, major as they are. Add some positioning control. Add an attack move, add a hold ground order, add a return fire only setting. Add a critical follow order. Enable the shift key, give better breakdowns with units so it’s not a challenge to rapidly assign each healer to its own squad while under attack as soon as a level starts.

The idea of Reckless Squad is great, but it’s a well formed idea without a well formed game around it. The novelty of the procedural generation wears off rapidly as the frustrations of the many shortcomings set in. It’s an unfinished proof of concept, more suited to Kongregate than GamersGate as is. If the developers take the time desperately needed to fix the critical flaws, it could be great. But for now, it’s just bad.

Final Score: 3/10

Disclaimer: This review is based entirely on extensive demo play, which showcases the most important part of the game, the actual game. I have no knowledge of in depth season, career, and other modes.

You know what’s fun? Baseball.

Okay, well…it’s fun to play. And for a long time there were fun baseball video games on consoles, each of which managed the complicated structure in different ways. The Atari 2600′s Super Challenge Baseball had one button and a joystick, but everyone knew to hold a direction during the pitch to influence the ball, and the simple “point and click” method worked for throwing the ball.

Possibly the best baseball interface of all time, intuitive, simple, and effective, Intellivision’s Major League Baseball. Batting and bunting on the side buttons was simple, and fielding was even easier. Every position had its own key on the 12 key pad, correlating right to where it should be on the field. Control runners simply by pointing with the disc. Easy stuff.

Later consoles with fewer buttons would go back toward point and click, but add pitching options. Tommy Lasorta would put his name on a fair share of games, and we’d even go into sci-fi with Super Baseball 2020.

And yet like so many games, baseball has had trouble making the transition to the third dimension. The addition of swing locations really threw a wrench into things, but it started to get worked out by World Series Baseball 2k2. Mostly the challenge was making pitches visible enough for players to read, without becoming more obvious than they would be in reality. Anyone who’s spent 2 minutes at a batting cage knows hitting a ball is hard, but hey, if we can make reliable hail mary passes in football games we should be able to hit a fastball.

So now we’re 10 years past the first baseball game of the modern era. We’ve had the arcadey titles and the sim titles now, and the latest among them is The Show, Sony’s series. 2010 is freshly out now, and…well, it’s a downgrade.

The simplest way to put it is that it’s too inconsistent. What you do, what the AI does, what the crowd does, how the ball moves. Maybe I’m wrong here, but sports games should be past the RPG stage, and that’s just where The Show is.

At the plate or on the mound it’s obvious that there’s dice rolling going on under the hood. Sometimes a pitch goes wild for no reason. Not just a little, a fastball, dead center at moderate speed released at the sweet spot, will shoot far off to the side. Pitching also suffers from a poorly designed meter. The confidence meter is a good idea, as is the variably sized sweet spot. The problem comes in the form of the speed being very inconsistent. Speeding the meter up or down as a whole to show being shaken, exhausted, or somehow affected is fine, but the wind up and the release speeds can vary tremendously. The system is a three press system. Once to start, once to set a speed, once for the release point. Simple, it’s like most golf games. Meter goes up, set power, meter goes down, release.

But the release can be three times as fast as the windup, completely disabling the ability of a player to get any sort of timing down. Naturally, the AI pitchers are unaffected.

There’s also the apparent use of batting averages to determine just how bit someone’s swing influence is, but it’s never properly shown. The size of the representative circle doesn’t change, but players with a high average will often swing well outside of the zone players aim for, to the extent that a completely missed swing, if player influence is any factor, can be a home run.

Now, it’s expected the stats of the real players are a factor, but they’re only that, a factor. A player making bad plays should pay the price, and vice versa for good plays. It just never seems to work that way, though. Throws routinely go high for players, runners stumble, fielders drop a ball. There’s a real bias toward the AI in The Show, particularly in terms of the umpire calling strikes. It’s even more obvious with the power hitters, who get clear favoritism from umpires, at least on the AI team.

None of this is helped by the awful controls for baserunning, or how non-responsive the swing controls feel. There’s also the poorly thought-out mechanic for swing checking, where you simply let go of the button. Sounds great, but in a video game where you can’t really see the proper depth or direction of a pitch, or where we’re used to just tapping the button to swing, it results in a lot of strikes or a lot of unchecked swings that you wanted to stop.

Stealing bases, going for extra, or just leading off, all of those require odd combinations of buttons and stick presses, easily done improperly or just not quickly enough to save a play. So you set the baserunning to automatic, but that results in players often NOT running when they should because of AI errors.

The camera angles just never quite work for the batter. It needs to be up or down a little to provide some idea of depth perception, rather than memorizing the timing of a pitch. They also never work for the fielding, often switching to an angle that reveals where a ball is going too late to react properly. The fielder selected is often counter-intuitive, leaving players to turn on assisted or automatic fielding. Another part of the game slips away from their control.

The sad statement of MLB 10:The Show is that it’s at it’s best when players do the least. If it played the whole game itself it’d be pretty damn good, but frustrating batting and pitching, the core of the game, just provide too much trouble. The fielding is fine when it’s working as it should, but when something goes wrong, and it often does, it’s just a frustration.

There are, of course, bugs aplenty, usually related to clipping planes. The screen behind the plate to save fans from getting a Liberace blocks balls (this website is classy) and nothing else. A pop-up foul straight back can go up and over the screen, dropping back right behind it, where most of us would call it “out of play.” But not The Show, or the catcher, who can and will stick his gloved arm right through the screen. Does he go through a gap at the bottom? Does he have superhuman powers to allow himself to shrink his arm to fit through the wire mesh? Does he have superhuman strength? Judging by the throws he’s made to stop a base stealer, I’m going to go with the shrinking thing.

Players routinely run through each other, both teammates and opponents. I’d complain about umpires, but to be fair they’re supposed to be out of the way. Still, for a simulation, once in a a while one should take that hit. The home plate ump does sometimes, but apparently it’s based on a forcefield he wears. Replays reveal that the ball’s impact on players, umps, bats, and fences is around three or four inches away from the actual object. Maybe everything is actually made of rare earth metals, it’s just a magnetic effect we’re seeing. That would make sense, right?

There are plenty of miscellaneous complaints to be had, really. Players don’t look like their real life counterparts, the animations are terrible to mediocre, particularly when it comes to errors, and there’s absolutely no clipping planes in the game. Balls often move right through the backs or sides of gloves to be caught. Sometimes they even make 90 degree turns to the left, moving two feet into Jeter’s hand, clearly visible both live and in the replay.

Balls will bounce through the fans, be that the fans leaning over the fence to catch a foul or the ones in the stands. No kidding. It just passes through them. Sometimes a ball can hop over the fence on a bounce and nobody moves at all, but the ball bounces like it’s hitting a trampoline. Again, I’m going with the “rare earth supermagnets” theory here.

When players are angry, they all look exactly the same. Their noses flatten like they’re shihtzus, they all have a kind of snouty-pig look, and appear to stretch and become two-dimensional, which is a constant problem with the game’s FOV anyway. Some players look like middle-aged men for no apparent reason.

The real shame is that at first, the game is fun. And sometimes there’s an urge to play, but not at the price of buying in. The demo is long enough and provides enough content to just play it. At least that way when a bug causes you to lose you didn’t pay for it and long term, it doesn’t really matter. It’s fun for about 30-45 minutes, maybe for 8 innings (aka, two full demo plays), but after that, it’s just gotten frustrating.

It is, ultimately, less of a sports sim and more of a baseball RPG given the constant stat-checking under the hood and the fact it’s better to just let most functions automate. There’s plenty of bells and whistles and extra touches. It’s nice to have the replays, the player reactions, the fully realized stadiums, but with the core game having the deep flaws it does, it doesn’t really matter. It’s a budget title promoted as a flagship.

It’s really, really disappointing.

God of War has declined since the first title, which only really had the flaws of repetition and the Hades sections.

God of War III has a lot of flaws and a few shining moments, ending up closer to Dante’s Inferno than God of War.

Graphically, there’s no question of the quality. And that may be the biggest flaw. So much is going on at all times on-screen that Kratos disappears into the middle of it, it ends up being difficult to tell just what’s going on sometimes. There’s not enough truly defined outlines, maybe an artificial outline should have been added. A little specular shading and rim lighting, for example, as used in Team Fortress 2 would have provided clear definition against the backgrounds and enemies that isn’t there.

It does manage spectacle at an unrivaled level, in gross detail. Everything about the game’s fights is huge. Kratos swings big swords in a 30 foot radius, the enemies he fights are 30 to 300 feet tall, and the methods of dispatch are nothing short of gruesome.

Unfortunately, the game itself falls to the spectacle. Combat isn’t solid, it’s loose and repetitive, button mashing being as advantageous as any strategy. There’s no sense of actual contact with an enemy, blades just spin in circles regardless of what they hit. Walls, blocking enemies, the sun, it doesn’t really seem to matter. Rather than feeling like an unstoppable monster, you just feel like you’re floating through the world.

Except when jumping. When jumping between platforms, players are forced to doublejump, immediately and always. Though any jump can be a double jump at any point in the jump, if it’s not done instantly it won’t count, and it’s back to the last checkpoint. It doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t help anything, it just annoys. Who knew that Dante would be the better jumper than Kratos? Not I, but both have been taking lessons from Simon Belmont. Six feet up, one foot forward. Yay.

Rather than fix the complaints of the QTEs, God of War III misses the point completely and moves the prompts to the side of the screen. It’s almost a good idea. At the top, triangle, bottom, x, you get the idea. The problem is players end up having to stare at the sides of the screen, and it’s particularly bad on a large screen, when it’s in peripheral vision instead of just a bit to the side. The other issue comes with it not always being immediately clear players need to mash the circle button, and the stick twisting prompts are often marred by the game being unresponsive to the input. The QTEs are hard to spot and don’t give a good window of time. Alas, if only they’d taken some cues from the excellent Heavy Rain.

The game’s camera has a tendency to be in the wrong spot as well, a real problem since players have no control over it. It likes to zoom in too close or too far, but always in a way that makes it hard to see Kratos, or hard to see what’s going around. Not that you always want to. Frankly, Kratos is the worst protagonist ever at this point. In the past he’d managed to inspire some sympathy at least, but now he’s just a psychopathic asshole and completely unlikeable. A good revenge story requires something people can get behind, and this doesn’t have it anymore. The story weakened in the second game, and in the third, well, it’s terrible.

In other bad changes, weapons and spells are tied together, though three of the four weapons have very few differences except for being a different spell, and one lets you hold the attack button to use a combo extending finisher, Bayonetta style. Aside from that, three are your standard chains, and there’s one set of big fat punchin’ gloves that really fail to satisfy.

There’s a few annoying escort sequences, though they end mercifully fast. Unmercifully long are the flying sequences, where Kratos heads up or down a ridiculously long tunnel, dodging debris awkwardly. It’s not fun, it’s not exciting, and it’s not really challenging, it’s just annoying and happens far too often. So do instant kill traps and pits. The game loves to kill players without warning in a way that requires ESP not to die. There’s a few puzzle-race sequences like that, where players WILL do them three or four times most likely to succeed, and they’re never short sequences. It’s always a drawn out series of lever pulls where anything short of perfection means starting over. Yet another flaw in a sequel full of them.

God of War III gets two stars. It’s not awful, but it’s more bad than good, and at the point it gets good, it’s over.

From their start, it was clear Quantic Dream was a studio swimming upstream from current gaming trends. While FPS and RTS games were taking over, they released Omikron: The Nomad Soul; Omikron was an adventure game featuring David Bowie playing two roles and providing the majority of the soundtrack, not to mention most of the album Hours on the game’s disc. A few years later, technological advancements allowed them to create Indigo Prophecy, a game which could be called a real experiment. The natural evolution of the adventure genre, it had players controlling three characters all acting in opposition to one another, forced to keep an eye on their mental states as they work to solve the mystery presented, occasionally interspersed by action in the form of quick-time events.

Now the studio has released Heavy Rain, a PS3 exclusive title, and the biggest release of February on any platform. Following in the footsteps of Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain is as much movie as game. And not in the Metal Gear 90-minute-sit-and-watch-this-cutscene way, very few things are out of player control, particularly the more cinematic moments. Rather, players direct the action and some of the dialog, working to find clues and solve the mysteries presented through four different main characters’ perspectives. Each is attempting to find  the Origami Killer, a serial killer who drowns children in rainwater, and his latest victim whose number may not be up yet, if they can find him in time.

Like its predecessor, Heavy Rain has players controlling movements in game by mimicking them with the controller, indicated on-screen. Careful movements require slow, subtle movements with the analog stick, forceful movements often involve moving the whole controller. Stomping something, for example, means thrusting the controller down; punching someone means swinging the controller to the side. It’s all indicated in a quick-time event style, with the required movement label hovering over the item. The system helps to add to intuition in the movement, especially analog stick based ones during action sequences in a way reminiscent of Dragon’s Lair and Time Gal. It also draws the eye toward the action, instead of keeping players watching the center of the screen for inputs.

There’s also no failure condition in Heavy Rain. The game continues on, and players live with the consequences, characters show them. No magical medkits in the game, when one of the characters got cut with a saw during a fight, the wound was still on her abdomen during a later scene. The game makes it clear every action and every inaction have consequences, be it a failure to react in time or making a poor decision. Because of the game’s habit of saving after every major decision or action, there’s not going to be a lot of trying it over during the game, though players can restart from any scene after they finish the game. The end result is that players have to carefully weigh decisions, and know it matters. No quickloading if things don’t go right, that’s just how things are going to be. Live with it.

Heavy Rain also takes a big risk by truly wanting to get players emotionally involved. The game starts slow, but with very good reason as things begin to unfold. Rather than just letting players make the easy decision to get the best ending, the game forces players to really feel out a decision. To accept the consequences, to empathize, to think ahead. To ask, as the game’s campaign and manual dare you to, “How far will you go to save someone you love?”

Technically solid, as it really needs to be considering the quick reflexes needed at some points, Heavy Rain holds a high framerate even in some extremely crowded sequences. It also doesn’t sacrifice graphical quality in those scenes, and side from some boundaries seeming to go further than they should around a character (moving through a crowd can look like people are floating away sometimes, rather than the actual contact one gets in Assassin’s Creed), they really are great. Once in a while the texture streaming shows up, but that’s rare. Faces are given particular attention of course, as shown on the loading screens which use a render of the characters’ faces, and at points they manage to show the level of detail and beyond one sees in top budget movies.

It’s a weakness of the game that the acting doesn’t always hold up to the levels it could for what is, effectively, a very long movie. The acting for children in the game is really weak, and their dialog just doesn’t come off as believable sometimes. The four main characters mostly put on solid performances, as do most of the side characters, with occasional weak spots showing up. They’re not winning any Oscars, but they’re not winning a Razzie either generally.

One of the most impressive aspects of the game is the environment presented. Rounded, believable characters moving around an environment that feels like a cheap Hollywood backlot can kill a scene. Heavy Rain spent the time and money on the locations they use to make them real. Quantic Dream always has an impressive musical score, licensing quite a few songs in this case. They’ve also spent the money to use real world gadgets and cars, rather than inventing knockoffs and distracting players with them.

Houses actually feel like real, livable and lived-in places. Train stations are big and open, junkyards have a rusty, downtrodden feel. The whole of the game, taking place during the fall rainstorms, just feels right, and the rain splattering on glass is particularly impressive. There’s an overall feeling of darkness, a quiet sadness in a lot of places, and a chaotic fear in others, aided by weather and music. Heavy Rain manages ambience in a way very few games or movies do.

This is not, to be fair, a game for kids or those looking for action. It calls itself interactive drama with good reason, the bulk of the game is exploring the scene, puzzling things out, talking with other characters. When the action happens, it’s fast and it feels like it’s for keeps, not just a throwaway fight. People come off battered, bruised and exhausted even when they win the fight. Everything has consequences, everything has meaning. Heavy Rain explores real mature themes, with graphic violence at points, nudity, and most of all, emotionally complex themes.

Video games tend to be about anger. It’s easy to tell someone to get revenge. It’s easy to point a gun at some goons who don’t mean anything to anyone, who aren’t people really (or sometimes really aren’t people, they’re zombies or aliens). But Heavy Rain is a game that tells players to save someone. To be in the game, evaluate everyone as a real, living person. Not another mindless target.

But in Heavy Rain, revenge isn’t the goal. The goal is to save a child, and find a serial killer. Heavy Rain is, ultimately, a game about love. That’s something not a lot of games are, but here’s hoping more will be; without a doubt, Heavy Rain an excellent game. If you want action, avoid. If you want an experience, jump on it.

Short version: Did you play the first? Get the expansions.

Long version: Do you like 4X games? Do you like RTS games, and are you potentially cynical about them like me? Get this.

Verbose version:

Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity is the original Sins of a Solar Empire game combined with its two expansion packs, Entrenchment and Diplomacy. Sins is an RTS with strong 4X elements, and rather than the standard open map, the game focuses on key points. Most of the action takes place around planets and asteroids, near stars, and all connected by hyperspace paths.

Micromanagement is generally put on the back burner in favor of good fleet variety, resource exploitation, and careful, precise strikes at weak points. There’s a lot of cat and mouse, a lot of distraction, and a lot of waiting. Sins is much more akin to chess than Starcraft. Of course, that’s just the base game, which is excellent, but the two included expansions add a ton.

Entrenchment fills in the gaps in the defense of the first game. Players needed to sit fleets around previously, now they can place star bases (devastating defensive placements that can hold planets and phase lanes with serious offensive abilities to quickly take an area) and deploy mines, among other defensive enhancements. There are also new entries on the new defense tree, helping to keep defenses up to snuff late game. There are also devastating structure-killers, changing the nature of the game from cat and mouse chasing open systems to countering the strategy and building/replacing ships on the fly. Battle lines, defensive lines and drawn, trenches are dug out, and players are going to slug it out. Improved AI means better battles and stronger assaults, as well as smarter defenses, making those wins harder to get.

Diplomacy adds, of course, cheese steaks.

Oh, and diplomatic options.

Envoy ships play a major role, and pirates have been upgraded to be pickier about targets. The AI is smarter too, and no longer is reliant on ganging up on the player to make up for its lack of intelligence. It’s closer to the Galactic Civilizations AI, which plays more to win for itself rather than just make the player lose. Diplomacy pushes players to focus less on military research and more on science and cultural advancement to gain influence which can be more useful than any weapon when you pay another player with a powerful army to hit a target for you.

Players can also reach a diplomatic victory, thanks to a score that goes up or down based on relations with other factions. The game is great at explaining interfaction relations, specifying just what’s going on even, but that doesn’t make it easy to keep everyone happy, of course, but it does help players who want options beyond “Destroy them all” to advance in the game, and take the heat off themselves as well.

The expansions also improve the control and visuals. It’s easy to zip around the galaxy and select specific fleets thanks to the very well designed interface, and the galaxy just looks great, with icons handling things for far zoom levels, and beautifully rendered ships showing up once things are close. The game’s performance is smooth and relatively easily navigated, a pretty small learning curve overall, something often lacking in the RTS and 4X genres. There’s a lot of game to learn, of course, and it’s not an easy game because of the scale, but it’s satisfying as can be.

Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity gets 5 out of 5 stars. It’s a deep RTS with surprising 4X depth. Looks great, sounds great, plays great. The nature of phase lanes and resources helps keep the game focused and keep conflict high without ever burning players out thanks to the supreme pacing.

Without question, Mass Effect was one of the strongest releases of 2007. A groundbreaking RPG, it was recognized for great characters, a fully realized setting, top notch graphics, an excellent score, and some fun, if flawed, combat. While it wasn’t perfect, players were definitely left wanting more, and after no short wait, the sequel has arrived.

It’s been just over two years now since the first came out, and in game time, it’s been just over two years since the fall of Saren, Sovereign, and the battle of the Citadel that took place in the first. After the passage of two years time quite a bit has changed in the galaxy, and after two years of development, quite a bit has changed with the game itself.

Right off the bat, it needs to be said that Mass Effect 2 is absolutely a worthy sequel, building on core elements and improving on some of the flaws, though unfortunately a few new ones show up as well as a logical gap or two.

The most dramatic changes in mechanics are in the combat system, and the move away from the unlimited ammo/overheat system of the first game is a prime example. Players will need to pick up thermal clips from fallen enemies to replenish ammo stocks now, with a limited number of shots before a weapon’s clip needs changed, the system that’s standard to modern shooters. Ammo reserves tend to be low, keeping players on the edge most of the time with the risk of running out of ammo being very present. For the soldier class, which lives bullet to bullet, running dry is going to be a common occurrence.

The system also opens up a few logical loopholes in the name of better gameplay mechanics. Players need to collect universal thermal clips to keep firing so weapons don’t overheat. Each clip adds more shots to each weapon. However, ammo is subtracted only on the weapon in use, when the idea is that ammo itself us unlimited, but the clips themselves are limited in use. What it results in is an empty assault rifle, but a loaded shotgun. The idea is presented that the clips are the actual items being used up, but players can reload as often as they want without expending a clip, and the clips should count for every weapon.

Ultimately, it’s a nitpick, but because the game sets such a high standard for itself, it’s strange that such an illogical occurrence was left in. It’s one of the few logical loopholes players run into, and as such it’s really a damning praise.

Beyond that nitpick, combat has been significantly streamlined. Many of the more miscellaneous skills are out, as are weapon specific skills that were needed for accuracy and damage. Each class gets a unique skill which really focuses on its strengths and needs, now. Soldier, the class which gets the most weapon options and is the only one to use assault rifles, gets an adrenaline rush that puts thing into slow motion, allowing them to line up those critical headshots with ease. Adept, a mage-type class which focuses on using psychic abilities to deal damage instead of weapons, can create a singularity that lifts large groups of enemies into the air, rendering them vulnerable to other abilities and to weapons fire. Ammo powers, which several classes have, are selected and applied to the weapon for the duration of a mission, unless another is used to override it.

The other primary class, engineer, focuses on tech skills.              They’re able to deploy combat drones which can force enemies out of cover and deal damage while the engineer stays safe. They’re masters of fighting synthetics thanks to AI hacking, and like adepts, lack a variety of weapon options. Where soldiers deal direct, even damage to most enemies, adepts are best against organics and deliver reliable damage to single enemies. Engineers don’t deal heavy damage, but they can hurt groups and are able to prevent enemy regeneration, movement,  and flushing them from cover.

In addition to the primary three, there are three combination classes. Vanguards, a soldier/biotic hybrid, who focus on devastating offense. They wield powerful shotguns and have the ability to charge into enemies, bullrushing them with devastating force, firing their weapons the whole time. Infiltrators, on the other hand, a soldier/engineer combination, do best at a distance, picking targets and opportunities with sniper rifles. They have the ability to cloak, rendering them invisible to enemies while they gain better position, and causing higher damage from catching enemies unaware. Like engineers, they’re particularly effective against synthetics, but can flush enemies out with fire, or halt them with cryo ammo.

The final class is the major support, the sentinel. They’re the adept/engineer combo, and among the most versatile fighters. They’ve got tech armor which boosts their shields, and if it’s destroyed it sends out a damaging pulse which knocks enemies down. They’ve also got warp and overload abilities, which can do serious damage to armor or shields. They can freeze enemies in place, and force them away. They’re a powerful defensive support class as a result, keeping enemies at bay and taking their defenses, even if they can’t deal heavy damage themselves.

In the past, health and shields were completely separate factors. Shields recharged quickly, but health damage was only fixed with med kits. Now the systems function more as one unit. Health still drops after shields, but it regenerates quickly alongside shields, and med kits are reserved for bringing back fallen teammates rather than just healing.

Just like players, enemies have a layered health, armor, and shield system. Dealing with the layer is a matter of using the right powers, be they tech attacks, biotic attacks, or ammo types. Rapid fire weapons do more damage to shields, as do disruptor rounds. Armor is best dealt with by high caliber weapons that have more impact at a slower rate, or skills that damage materials like incendiary ammunition. Using the wrong weapon or power just leads to wasted ammo and wasted recharge time, and can easily result in failure when powerful enemies still have their protection by the time they get up close and personal.

Returning players will need an adjustment period to get to know the new systems, but it quickly becomes clear how superior the new combat mechanics are, logical holes notwithstanding. Just don’t think about it, and it works out fine. It’s hard to remember when combat is getting frantic anyway, though when your favorite gun for the situation is empty and you’ve got a full stock of heavy pistol ammunition, you may lament the oddity for a moment.

When not locked in combat, players will spend time exploring various hubs, often cities or space stations. These areas generally function as quest hubs, where players will talk to NPCs, learn more about what’s going on, get directions on how to find someone or something they’re after, or pick up information from conversations already being held.

The game’s conversational system uses a quick wheel of simplified dialog choice option where there are up to six responses to choose from, presented during conversation. The position on the wheel, left or right, up or down, determines whether they’re responses that fall under the paragon path, renegade path, move the conversation forward, or gather more information.

Players can pick a response as others are speaking; it keeps the fully voiced conversation flowing, allowing the acting to shine. It does a great job of removing ambiguity that’s occasionally been a problem in RPG dialog trees, removing the worry of unintentionally insulting someone, or unintentionally complimenting them!

Occasionally players can take a bigger, more dramatic action during dialogue when a paragon or renegade option pops up. Instead of waiting for the next piece of dialogue, the character takes a decisive step. Could be shooting someone, could be hacking something, could be pushing someone out of the way. The actual event is quite variable, but it adds that touch of drama that many RPG conversations lack. It’s an unpredictable element added to conversation, and also one that adds depth and realism.

Most hubs contain areas specifically for combat, dangerous sections NPCs will send them to. Usually they’ll have small amounts of resources to find as rewards, and items which are needed for NPCs in the main areas of the hub. Most of the time combat takes places in these special areas. Tension is lost, admittedly, by that decision, as it’s easy to feel safe in an area where one would have been ready for ambush in the first game. But, it also allows for more dynamic areas. Because there’s a special set piece for it, the area can really have some unique features that would be too much for the exploration and conversation areas.  Permanent changes to the area are possible as well, since changing that area doesn’t require a before and after version of a hub.

While there is lots of run and gun gameplay, this is still a cinematic RPG at the core, the story of a man (or woman) building a team of specialists to take on the impossible. Since players and teammates have fewer powers this time around, there are 10 teammates at release, each with their own skill set, and two can be taken on any mission. Creating a diversely skilled team will make the difference between a frustrating struggle or demolishing everyone in the way.

Adding additional depth are the loyalty missions, teammate specific missions that involve something deeply important to them. These missions tend to involve some hard moral choices beyond the standard paragon/renegade choices. They often end up as unique situations, intense combat, or some very tricky choices to make in a non-combat situation. Several of the loyalty missions are among the most emotional points in the game, and they really pull you into their histories. As an upside beyond the standard credits, materials, and experience points, these missions unlock a third special power for the squad mate. Players can use one of those powers themselves, and given the broad range of functions they can help fill a class weakness easily.

One of the many small changes that add to the world’s depth is a basic email system. Receiving only, but those messages come from people you’ve helped, hurt, those who have missions for you, and occasionally spammers. Morlan’s Famous Shop has an offer for you!

While it sounds like a small thing, and it is, it’s something that really adds to the depth of the universe. RPGs tend to suffer from a lack of consequences, or an appreciation that your actions mattered. Now it’s made clear by the people affected most.  And it’s just funny, of course, to get a 419 scam even in the future. It’s the small touches like that which help to really sell the game’s universe to players.

For all the improvement, there’s one system that stand out for its flaws. That mechanic is planetary scanning. Players launch probes from orbit while scanning, a slow, arduous dragging of a cursor along the surface of a planet, moving it closer to materials needed for upgrades.

The upside is that if there’s something to do on that world, it’s immediately noted and easily tracked down. The downside is that to get the materials needed for upgrades requires slogging through a lot of planets. This means a lot of holding down a trigger, slowly rotating, using up the probes, flying back to the nearest fuel station to buy more and repeating. The collection of materials is an absolute chore and a tremendous time sink in a game which otherwise effectively minimizes downtime.

Really, that’s the biggest complaint to be made about the game. Planetary probing is downtime, plain and simple. Everything else is great. Mass Effect 2 is a game that any RPG or action gamer should pick up, hands down. It walks the line between the two genres in a way most can’t quite manage. A feat that may very well not be done again until Mass Effect 3 hits stores.

It’s a cinematic experience at, a hard sci-fi movie that just happens to clock in over 40 hours of play fairly easily.  It offers solid acting, a great musical score and all kinds of spectacle. Bioware has gone back into their world, and even with one or two logical holes, it’s a truly believable one. More importantly, it’s fun one to be in, to explore and to fight through. In short, Mass Effect 2 is game of the year material.

God of Inferno.

Dante of War.

God of…Dante.

Okay, you get it, it’s a God of War clone. Perhaps the cloniest of the clones, even, whereas most God of War clones seem like the second or third generation down, this game feels just like someone grabbed that fairly lame Hades sequence from God of War and expanded it into a 6 hour game.

God of War. Sorry, just needed to say it again.

And yes, that does imply what you’re thinking, it is, itself, fairly lame. It’s not for lack of effort, to be honest. Dante’s Inferno gets some things right, some very, very important things. For the most part, the game looks good, and the game does a surprising job with the source material. I didn’t think a story about someone walking through hell could turn into much of an action title, but the team behind the game found an angle to work.

Dante’s Inferno is a simple enough revenge story. Man goes to war, wife is killed while he’s gone, wife is…taken by Devil, man goes to carve path of destruction through hell to reclaim wife guided by Virgil. Still fairly simple, overall, just extraordinary circumstances. Inside that story is lots and lots of hacking and slashing, starting with a fight against Death, and culminating in the “if you didn’t see this coming welcome to Earth here’s a sample of our historic literature that’s been heavily influential in one of our major religions” fight against Lucifer himself. To get there, Dante has to carve through armies of demons and the damned, though those armies don’t have much variety.

There are a few varieties of the main grunts, but they’re generally only going to take a few hits before dying. There’s a few grunt-leader types, occasionally upgraded with a better weapon or a shield, but nothing overly special considering they’re big demons until the end of the game. A fast unit with an upgraded version, a berserker unit, a priest unit…there’s nothing particularly out of the ordinary, but the designs work well with the theme.

The good news in all this is that the combat is quick, it’s furious, and it’s smooth. Visceral Games did a great job of making the control responsive as can be, and the game manages to keep 60 FPS throughout, a damned important thing in an action game that often doesn’t end up being the case. Props for that. Bad framerates mean slow responses, either due to not seeing something in time or because the system takes too long to get to the command. Dante’s Inferno blocks when you tell it to, the combos key in correctly, and the timing isn’t too picky without being so loose to make people do something other than they wanted. It’s a shame that the platforming doesn’t hold up to the high standard of the combat.

The platforming is a mess of bad angles and strange jump arcs. Dante seems to jump eight feet high and two feet long with a running start, aided by one of the worst jump animations I’ve seen in a long time, which is stranger as I think it’s motion captured. But it just looks off somehow. Dante needs to get right at the edge and jump perfectly, even off a swinging rope where he seems to forget the laws of physics exist and shoot straight up from any point in the swing, even right at the bottom. Woe be to ye who fail to read the bad camera angle as well, not going far enough away from the camera, or too far, slamming into one of the many invisible barriers.

Other times, the camera will just get too damn close to an area so players can’t see where they’re jumping off to, forcing a leap of faith which often ends two inches to the right of the needed goal, meaning a respawn, a trek through an annoying jumping puzzle, and another fountain smash/soul redeem. It’s telling that two of the game’s items serve no function but to lower tedium, even at the cost of benefits in one case. The camera is the deadliest thing in the game, and this is a game that has far, far too many instant kills players have no way of successfully navigating the first time.

When the game is at its peak, it’s got a strong artistic style and fluid combat. Unfortunately more often it’s in the Malebolge, flailing at players angrily. The climbable walls look like Disney’s Haunted Mansion really, surfaces that are supposed to be textured like a stack of coins just look like gold circles with poorly drawn shadows rather than any bump mapping or depth. There’s a lot of nudity for shock value, rather than for actual artistic design, and the circle of Lust, naturally, falls victim to this in particular, though it’s not a surprise there. Some of the design is clever and subtle, some is as ridiculous as Cleopatra’s breasts having tongues.

There’s also a lack of an artistic palette too often. Most of the game glows bright orange when a significant portion of Inferno is indeed lacking in flames. It’s too bad, because Limbo has some excellent setpieces and designs, as do the lower levels, beyond the city of Dis. The fiery theme is great for Heresy, but it feels wrong in Limbo and the other places it shows up, especially compared to such strong areas like the Suicides.

Ultimately, Dante’s Inferno really tries, but ends up in the realms of cheese or derivation far too often. The combat is a high point, the platforming is a very, very low point, and everything else swings wildly back and forth. And for a game that can be finished in 7 hours or less, there really needs to be more than two hours of great compared to the five of “meh.”

Dante’s Inferno gets 2 out of 5. Enjoyable moments, great spectacle, brilliant framerate. Terrible platforming, terrible cameras, and too many “gotcha!” kills and nitpicks. Major God of War fans should give it a rent, the rest, pass on it.

Space dungeons ahoy!

Greed:Black Border is a recently released dungeon crawler available on Steam. The setting tends toward sci-fi, though from the start it’s quick to throw in zombie horrors to match the security droids and giant alien insects/crustaceans. No surprise, it doesn’t really deviate from the roots, though it focuses on ranged combat for the three classes which equal out to long, medium, and short range guns. There’s very very little variety within those options. You’re packing a rifle, a minigun, or a flamer. That’s it. It will, eventually, do slightly different things (like a bi-directional spray for flamers), but players pick a role and stick with it.

As a result, the pyro class tends to show off the game’s deficiencies with a lack of long range weapons and abilities. Most of the time enemies come to the player, but ranged ones keep some distance. Pyro players are stuck chasing them into corners and using the dodge ability constantly.  They’re also likely to get stuck on an enemy. The game is too sensitive in deciding what a player is trying to do, and even when it seems like there’s a wide range, they’ll get locked onto a target when they were trying to run away. Since pyros are up close and personal they have a bigger problem with it, especially in crowded fights or boss fights.

Somewhat a genre weakness, boss fights really tend to drag out, and a lack of checkpoints means a big timesink and loads of frustration; to make matters worse, the game has a tendency to have a framerate drop in the midst of those fights, usually when the boss is entering bullet hell mode. Losing because you messed up is one thing, losing because the game doesn’t work right is another. Even in normal exploration with lowered settings the game likes to slow down with crowds, and when combined with the overly-eager targeting, it’s a recipe for disaster.

Somewhat an issue of the genre’s isometric nature, Greed tends to hide enemies behind walls. When the cursor is over them and they’re in the player’s line of sight, they’re highlighted. But that’s only when the cursor is over them, meaning unless you have ESP, you have to get guessing, only aware of the problem at all when you start taking damage.

There’s also quite a few “gotcha!” moments as a result, frustrating deaths that should never have happened, really. Often they’re just BEFORE a checkpoint, and after an already significant fight players were intended to have just scraped through. Being jumped by an overpowered enemy around the corner just isn’t fun in this kind of game.

A critical oversight is the lack of pausing for menus and windows. Inventory, skills, or the computer menu leave things running. Normally it’s not a big problem, but plot critical items pop up a new window, and that two seconds can be exactly the amount of time it takes a swarm of enemies to overwhelm you.

Unsurprisingly there’s occasional pathfinding issues when going to open containers, but for the most part characters find their way around without too much difficulty, a common genre issue. There’s a lack of inventory space, but toward the end of the first level players can start selling items, and they can be converted into raw ore at any point, which converts large items into a single square stackable material. Instantly being converted into actual cash would have been better, but it’s a reasonable solution, if tedious since every item has to be done individually.

Outside of all those complaints, there is some fun to be found really. The environments are nicely done, and while they tend toward meandering they’re well built and believable. The artistic style is a semi-realistic design with a bright palette. Enemies are large and the most dangerous enemy types have distinctive silhouettes. Enemies that tend toward support roles or have particularly high damage usually get a particle effect or a glow to help them stand out as key targets, a nice touch for the all-important prioritizing that has to take place rapidly.

The game’s voice acting is cheesy in just the right way, helping to lend to the overall feel of 1980s sci-fi that it runs with. The weapons, the audio, the visual styles all have a level of camp that’s hard to not enjoy. The enemies too, giant crabs, zombies, and powerloaders, all feel like they belong in mid-80ssci-fi/horror movies, being mowed down by Jessie Ventura.

And when the game is in its groove, it’s fun. Searching new areas, figuring out new enemies, mowing down hordes. It’s just a shame it falls out of it so often, into the conventions and failings of the genre.

Greed:Black Border gets 2.5 out of 5. Really fun moments marred tedious bossfights and some big oversights. There’s a tendency toward tedium, inherent in the genre, but it does try to throw in some surprises that can end up being quite entertaining.

Oh boy.

Disappointment.

A bullshot loaded trailer is always a hint toward disappointment. In this case, the game’s footage has been sped up for the trailers, making it look a lot more engaging than it is. And a lot more entertaining, considering most of the minigames move at a glacial pace, and there’s a horrible lack of variety considering there’s 101 of them. Really, I expect some repeats at that number, but in the unfortunately significant number I played, I found four that were enjoyable, and a ton that were poorly thought out.

Most of the action based games require supernatural reflexes and a little too much luck in having a controller in the right position to hit the A button when you’ve been bouncing it up and down already, and the puzzle based games are…well, just so damn slow they’re strongly prone to being boring. Too much down time, games run too long, the amount of loading screens is ridiculous, and there’s no sense of competition for the most part. Games run between one to four players, often one player taking a long, slow turn, and they’re as far from memorable as can be generally. The only game I remember is “Deadly Distraction”, where players have to play a Space Invaders clone and clear the board in a certain timeframe. Excepting there’s no shields, and aliens just blink to a full body length to the side at about 1 FPS.

There’s also a game called “Monster Exercise”, wherein you run from a t-rex and jump obstacles. But the obstacles appear too fast and there’s very little warning before a player sees them, particularly when running at full speed, which is needed often to stay in the lead and gain points. Players could work on this by running slower, but the camera is ahead of the players, facing back, and there’s a whole two feet visible before getting hit by an obstacle and losing points. If you’re not psychic, and not an AI, you’re hitting it.

It’s just a sadly standard example of the games. Either you need superhuman reflexes or it’s boring as hell, waiting for a cue of some sort.

Another example! Explosive Quality Assurance. Hit a bomb with a hammer until it’s ready to explode. This could be amusing, were there real feedback, instead the bomb and conveyor belt start shaking. And by shaking I mean the object looks like it’s teleporting randomly around the screen. The angle doesn’t change, the color doesn’t change, it doesn’t spark, it just starts to teleport around wider and wider, in the same effect for explosions used during the Atari 2600 days as one yellow pixelated dot flashed around a tight area. It worked well for drawing flies too! But it doesn’t work well for this.

Everything about the game feels cheap. Bad German art (Elf Bowling, Polar Bowler, Yeti Games, yeah, that generic style, big noses, small eyes), poor animation, little optimization, constant loading, and a minimum of creativity. The little bit of speech is COMPLETELY unsynced from the animation, the sounds are uninspired at best, and the games…they all feel the same, and that often translates to a range of boring to actively bad.

101 in 1 Party Megamix gets 1.5 out of 5 stars. It’s not 100% awful, but it’s very bad in most regards, and what little good there is isn’t worth fighting to get to. Once again, the genre of good party games seems to be limited to Mario Party this generation.