Game Reviews Archive

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Game Review: StarDrive

By
Adam Shaftoe
– May 10, 2013Posted in: Reviews, Video Reviews

Where to begin with StarDrive? Perhaps, in the past. One of my fondest memories as a gamer is the Christmas break of my eighth grade. Therein I devoted a solid two weeks to my first ever game of Master of Orion. It was a sublime experience for me as a budding galactic tyrant. In the years that followed, I discovered other 4X entires: Endless Space, Sword of the Stars, and Galactic Civilizations to name a few. I also dabbled in tabletop games like Battletech and Renegade Legion: Leviathan. Bearing this in mind, it’s fair to say that my tastes lean toward the complex. But of all those games, StarDrive is easily the best I have played in terms of balancing accessibility with difficulty, offering a level of creative freedom usually reserved for tabletop games, and most importantly, evoking that same eighth grade Master of Orion sense of wonder.

Like most games of this genre StarDrive starts players with a home solar system and a handful of ships. From there, stellar hegemons must research new technologies, expand their empire, negotiate with alien races, and lead an armada across the stars – all in real time. Five seconds in real life equals one turn in the game. To the designers’ credit, I’ve never once felt bored or rushed within this real time system. Granted there are times when I pause the game to take stock of a planet’s economy or an incoming fleet of xeno scum. But no matter if I am managing a single star system or a late game empire, the pace always feels appropriate.

Though much and more of the game can be turned over to AI management, which is generally pretty sharp, micromanagers are going to find themselves utterly enraptured by StarDrive’s economic system. Each planet in the game produces two main resources, food and production. A given world can then be set to export, import, or store each resource. This allows lush Terran planets to develop as breadbaskets or hubs of research, while harsher, but mineral rich, worlds are cultivated into production centers. Facilitating this trade is an intuitive system of player, or AI, designed trade routes. 90% of the time this is a brilliant mechanic to ensure nobody in your empire starves to death. The rest of the time I’ve watched one of my expensive transport ships claiming it is “looking for a trade route” even though I’ve assigned a clear one to it. It’s a minor annoyance which would probably be eradicated if I turned shipping over to the AI, but where’s the fun in that?

Setting up trade routes also allowed me to discover some of the finer points of detail that have gone into the game. One such flourish is planets orbiting their star in real time. I discovered this quite by accident when I noticed a trade fleet sitting idle in a system. I zoomed in only to discover that planets Castor and Pollux had moved out of the trade routes I designated. This may seem like much ado about nothing, but small points like this really help sell the idea that I, personally, am managing a space empire.

Brilliant as it is to command my own version of the Colonial Union, ruthlessly exploiting the Earth as a breeding tank for colonists, manoeuvring from a galactic scope down to a single planet can be a bit clumsy. Eventually I memorized the important keyboard shortcuts, but when ship models on the galactic map are designed (somewhat) in scale to stellar bodies, there can be a lot of zooming in and tracking on the mini-map. It’s very honest to the grand emptiness of space, mind you. But players should be prepared for a bit of extra mouse work.

Perhaps if StarDrive came with an interactive tutorial I might have been able to sidestep some of this early confusion. Then again, I could have paid a bit more attention to the built-in slide show explaining the game’s core game mechanics. Beyond this initial overview, an in-game help system offers a triad of videos and expanded entries on the tutorial’s material. So if you start to feel a bit overwhelmed, the guidance is there. Just don’t expect StarDrive to teach you once the game begins. The onus is on you, the player, to learn what you are doing.

Where StarDrive really shines is in terms of ship building and ship combat. Where Galactic Civilizations had players making lego ships as a lead in to glorified paper-rock-scissors battles, StarDrive creates an experience similar to what I used to get when designing a pen and paper starship for a game of Leviathan. Each ship class has a fixed amount of space for internal and external modules. From there the player uses their tech at hand to design a ship which will suit a particular role. Let me give you an example. When the game begins you can only build fighter-class ships and freighters. Alone in the galaxy I didn’t bother researching corvette-class hulls. This proved a mistake when I ran afoul of some corsairs with ships much bigger than mine. I sent out two squadrons of my finest fighters to meet the brigands. None returned.

At that point I seemed well and truly fucked. Then, inspiration struck. I could take a freighter hull and load it up with guns. Sure it would maneuver like a pig in a bog, but it would protect the Earth. Lo and behold my mighty freighter fleet won the day. Of course they ran out of ammo during the next battle, once again proving that logistics is at the core of StarDrive.

From there I began further experimenting with ship design. Once I unlocked laser tech, I built a line of fast interceptors designed to shoot down missiles while heavier corvettes pounded the enemy with forward guns. Learning from past mistakes, I loaded out a middle weight freighter with a munitions factory so I could rain a constant stream of nukes on a “Kulrathi” planet without sending in the marines. I have dreams of building my own personal Space Battleship Yamato and blasting my foes with mighty broadsides, but I haven’t quite unlocked the titan ship class.

If that were not enough, StarDrive also offers a truly inspired fleet construction window. Rather than having industrial planets spam out ships, a la Master of Orion, players can build fleets of almost limitless scope. This involves designing a proper combat formation: fighter screens, fast attack destroyers, bomber wings, if you can imagine it, you can build it. The fleet manager then asks if you want to requisition the fleet from existing ships or build them from scratch, automatically dividing production between the core worlds of an empire. I may have got a little carried away with this during my first play through. In economic terms, I think the expression is shameless defect spending. Still, it was worth it to watch the fleet assemble in real time before FTLing into battle. Military history nerds, delight; this game is for you. It may not have the flash of Sword of the Stars or Homeworld, but the persistent top down view accentuates the player’s position as commander-in-chief instead of a mere Admiral.

At present StarDrive only offers a single “sandbox” mode. In terms of end-game, this requires either wiping out all other life in the galaxy or bringing the races together into a federation. It does, however, seem a bit odd to build in a menu option with only a single game mode in mind. I’ll assume that Zero Sum Games has plans for more content, or they’ve built in the game modes option as a means of supporting an already very active modding community.

StarDrive does fall short in a few areas, nothing critical mind you but certainly noticeable. Despite a commitment to modding, there’s no way to change the game’s default key bindings. Event notifications are just a little too spare for my taste. I don’t need a ping each time a ship gets built, but a fleet’s construction should merit some alert. Where every other screen in the game has an obvious “click this to exit” button, the fleet construction screen does not. And occasionally ships will rally to a location seemingly of their own volition. Again, these are small issues and nothing which should preclude a person buying the game. I would submit that addressing these points in a patch would make an already excellent game that much better.

In the final assessment, I’m reminded of something Jake Soloman said during one of his XCOM Enemy Unknown interviews. Soloman suggested that strategy games come in two varieties: complex and complicated. Complex games are deeply layered, but still approachable and thus still fun. Complicated games are just that, complicated. StarDrive is firmly rooted in the complex category. It’s not an easy game by any measure. Truth be told, it probably has a steeper learning curve than most games out there. But it stops well short of being burdensome upon a willing player’s patience. The current build has a few cosmetic bugs, but nothing that broke my gameplay experience. Overall, StarDrive reflects the developers’ clear passion for 4X games, as well as a long standing relationship to science fiction as a genre – see some of the alien races for various ‘in’ jokes. This is a must have for both fans of 4X games and those looking to cut their teeth on this style of game.

StarDrive

Developed by Zero Sum Games

Published by Iceberg Interactive


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Game Review: Monaco – What’s Yours is Mine

By
Adam Shaftoe
– May 1, 2013Posted in: Game Reviews, Reviews, Video Reviews

So I thought to myself, what’s more fun than doing a video/screencast review? The answer: waiting for about three hours while the video encodes in Windows movie maker and still doesn’t have the decency to register on youtube as HD compatible. Seriously, before I do one of these again, I am going to have to invest in some better software for video editing. At any rate, I present you with my first ever video review. Up on the block is Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine.

I don’t want to pre-empt myself too much; however I will say here that this is a top-down stealth/heist game from indie publisher Pocket Watch Games.

And do feel free to leave me some comments on what I could have done to improve on this review. I already have some thoughts in mind on what I might do differently for my next video review.


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Game Review: Iron Man 3 – The Official Game

By
Adam Shaftoe
– April 26, 2013Posted in: Game Reviews, Reviews

In approaching Gameloft’s Iron Man 3 I knew enough to keep my expectations reasonably low. Still, the part of me which reveled in the impossible arcade games of my youth really wanted to get on board with an Iron Man infinite flyer. Unfortunately Iron Man 3 seems to eschew everything Imangi Studios did with Temple Run 2 to make this variety of “free to play” game even remotely enjoyable, at least for the duration of a bus ride or a prolonged poop. What? Don’t give me that look. Everybody plays with their iDevices on the toilet.

Out of the gate, Iron Man 3 managed to surprise me. The graphics are polished. There’s some good voice acting for Tony, Pepper, and Jarvis. It wasn’t quite a cinematic experience on par with my first play through of Infinity Blade 2, but Gameloft certainly seemed to be making the effort. And then things started falling apart.

The game’s tutorial mission introduces the ins-and-outs of flight and combat mechanics. While the former worked quite well on an iPhone, the drag and zap mechanics of the latter were clearly designed with an iPad in mind.

As I fumbled my way through shooting and crashed into buildings, I also noticed some pretty severe frame rate drops. Granted I’m playing on an iPhone 4, thus placing me two generations behind current Apple tech and right on the periphery of planned obsolesce, so maybe that’s on me for not throwing enough of my money at Cupertino.

Then there’s the waiting. At the time of this review I’ve spent more time waiting to play Iron Man 3 than I have actually shooting down AIM agents and avoiding Malibu’s numerous low flying blimps. How so? First and foremost is a bevy of load screens. One would think they were playing something on the PS1 for the amount of time this game spends spinning an ARC reactor load wheel. Granted, I could put up with the loading if there was a post-mission “play again?” option that didn’t require using premium in-game currency. Otherwise the end of a flight offers a leader board, a couple load screens, and a mandatory trip to Stark Industries’ repair bay.

Taking a cue from the likes of World of Tanks, wrecked armour requires a fixed amount of real time to repair itself. Though it is easy enough to secure a second Iron Man suit, allowing a player to use one armour while the other repairs, the differences between the mk. 3 and mk. 5 in terms of overall in-game longevity is painfully noticeable. Naturally there is an option to skip the waiting and keep using the mk. 5, but that comes at the cost of, you guessed it, premium currency.

Yet for the sake of game play, which even includes a daily boss fight, I was willing to overlook Iron Man 3’s shortcomings. The waiting seemed worth it for a dose of Stark branded ass-kicking. Then I tried to buy my third Iron Man suit. Disaster ensued.

The suit I wanted looked like the bastard child of War Machine and Rumble from G1 Transformers. After about 30 missions, I finally had enough experience points to unlock the mk. 25 aka “the Striker”. Except that I didn’t.

12,000 experience points only unlocked the blueprint for “the Striker.” I needed to use an equal number of “Stark Credits”, the game’s base currency, to actually build the armour. I was scoring about 200-300 Stark Credits per mission. You do the math.

On that note, let’s turn our attention to the big question: how much does the game cost if you want to unlock everything with cash money? Securing the blueprints for the game’s eighteen Iron Man suits costs, wait for it, $99.99. Keep in mind this is before you grind or buy the Stark Credits required to build the damn things. I’m not able to tell you the real money cost for the required Stark Credits as the game keeps the experience/credit cost of higher tier suits locked. I love my readers, but I do not have time to research that one out.

Bottom line: You’ve really got to wonder what was going through Marvel/Disney’s hive mind when they let this game get branded as Iron Man 3: The Official Game. Load screens, painful in both quantity and duration, shatter any sense of immersion within the game. Though fun enough when it actually lets a player fly, the action is short lived and marred by frame rate drops. Ultimately the grind to buy ratio for additional armours frames this title as nothing but an attempt to squeeze players for fast cash. Howard Stark and Obadiah Stane would be proud of what Gameloft has put together; the rest of us would do well to avoid this title.


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Game Review: Path of Exile – My First 15 Levels

By
Adam Shaftoe
– February 6, 2013Posted in: Game Reviews

Before I recount my initial experience with Path of Exile, Grinding Gear Games’ dungeon crawling free-to-play MMO, I should contextualize my rather complicated relationship with this particular economic model in gaming. Generally, I hate free-to-play games. What do you know, it’s not that complicated after all. In fact, I’m about as hostile a witness as this new wave of gaming could imagine. I reject micro-transactions and “premium” content as an unholy marriage of brain hacks and developer laziness. Moreover, I hold the studios who churn out these games, intent on shamelessly and perpetually bilking money out of dupes, accountable for damaging the broader thesis of gaming as interactive art.

All of this said, I maintain some long-shot hope that a developer will find a way to do something interesting with the creatively (and morally) bankrupt free-to-play model. And against all odds, I think Path of Exile might be on track to create a worthwhile free-to-play experience. Granted, the game is still in beta, and the micro-transaction system is not yet online. However, this particular dark fantasy adventure seems more robust than almost any other free-to-play game I’ve ever test driven.

So let’s start with the most obvious point of discussion; Path of Exile bears a striking similarity to Diablo. Of course, what hack and slash game isn’t similar to Diablo? Considering there’s a monster in the game called the Diabloist, I have to assume the developers at Grinding Gear Games are aware of the similarities. Whether the Diabloist monster is a knowing wink at the audience/competition or a giant middle finger to originality remains to be seen.

At least in terms of story, Path of Exile’s first act seems reasonably original. For want of an opening cut scene, the details remain somewhat scant. What I’ve gleaned through playing the game is pretty standard fare for a dark fantasy world. As the lone survivor of a shipwreck, your character washes up on the shores of Wraeclast. With little more than a glass shank in hand, the hero comes across the town of Lioneye’s Watch, a community full of exiles attempting to endure the hard scrabble life of Wraeclast’s coast. It’s a familiar conceit for anybody at all familiar with the Elder Scrolls series. What’s remarkable is the length of the game’s first act.

Though somewhat linear in its design, Path of Exile’s first act seems on par, if not longer than, Diablo III’s first movement. Granted, there’s nothing special in PoE’s “fetch this” and “kill that” quest mechanics. What is notably absent, however, is a sense of the game artificially holding me back. Many F2P games facilitate excessive level grinding as a means of manipulating players into micro-transactions. I don’t get that feeling from Path of Exile. Much to my disbelief, Path of Exile just wants me to play the game and progress at my own speed.

If Path of Exile can rightly be accused of linear, perhaps even simplistic level and quest design, it positively shines in the complex way it manages a character’s skills. At present, Path of Exile offers six character classes, three of which fall into the pure fighter-mage-rogue triad; the other three blend elements of the main classes. I’m currently playing as a “Shadow”, which allows for some hand-to-hand combat as well as significant magic use.

When a character levels up, they add a progression point along a massive passive attribute skill tree. How massive is it? Think something like the sphere grid from Final Fantasy X. Here’s a small sample.

Path of Exile's skill tree boasts 1350 upgrade points. Eat your heart out, Tidus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Active skills are governed by gems inserted into armour and weapons. The more a skill is used, the more the gem itself, and not the player, levels up. For example, one of my green gems enables a double strike with one-handed weapons. I’ve also been using it since the start of the game. Leveled as it is, I can one-shot most monsters which come my way. Yet if I find something better to use, I can trade the leveled up gem with other players rather than letting the skill sit fallow. Note my use of the word trade…

Unlike seemingly every other fantasy MMO ever made, Path of Exile has opted for a barter based economy. This feature alone is perhaps the best evidence that Grinding Gear Games is intent to do something with the F2P model other than profit off unwitting rubes. Most every free-to-play game has some sort of two-tiered currency. Silver, for want of a better generic term, is acquired in-game. Gold, however, must be bought through micro-transactions. Thus the balance of such games is predicated upon an inherent imbalance. Seemingly, this is not the case for Path of Exile.

Who then runs Barter Town? Mostly “orbs” which modify stats on items or turn normal items into rare/magic ones. There are, of course, some down sides to this system. Even though the game is in beta, there is huge concentration of high-level players focusing the trade chat toward endgame items. A level 15 nobody like myself has little option but to trade with in-game vendors who inevitably offer depreciated exchange rates. For want of an auction house, I see little to motivate low-level trade deals.

When the going gets tough in Path of Exile, call upon some friends - if you can find them that is.

Grouping up for party play is another area where Path of Exile needs a bit more polish. Though I’ve been quite successful soloing the game, albeit in the “default” league, my attempts at finding a pick-up party have been less than stellar. Even though areas outside of cities are all instanced, there’s no insta-teleport to the party leader’s location. This has led me to spend anywhere from two to ten minutes trying to find my party after joining. Once battle begins, players in a party share an instance. This has led, according to higher level players, to a serious ninja looting problem. Hopefully some sort of equitable division mechanic is in the works for the release build.

I’m also concerned about the character classes. Of the six, only two are female: the witch and the ranger. Call me crazy but gender locking the classes seems a little retrograde. Various rumors circulate in-game suggesting Grinding Gear Games will release alternate gender classes as micro-transaction material, which, if true, seems like another giant mistake. Why put the onus to pay on the very demographic game studios should be coveting? Say nothing for the obvious fact that the female characters are assigned to physically weaker classes. Women can’t be templars or marauders? Something isn’t sitting right.

When tallying the pros and cons of Path of Exile, I find myself cautiously optimistic. As it stands right now, I enjoy the game. I’m tempted to make a second character to try out the near perma-death of Hardcore mode. While the devs’ promise of short-term leagues, instance invasions, a la Dark Souls, and a commitment to ethical free-to-play gaming sounds good, the real test will come when the micro-transactions go online. Can Grinding Gear Games really recoup the initial and ongoing expense of developing this game through selling cosmetic alterations to characters? Or will the realities of business begin to creep into their post-release sales model?

Time will tell. Though I’m not 100% sold on Path of Exile, it has managed to steer clear of any of the cardinal sins of free-to-play gaming. If they deliver on their promises, this may well prove to be an island sanctuary among the foetid waters of free games.


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Game Review: Ghostbusters iOS

By
Adam Shaftoe
– January 25, 2013Posted in: Game Reviews

Approaching Beeline Interactive’s Ghostbusters on the iOS unites two faint hopes for this critic. The first hope, which the game summarily dashes, is that somebody might finally give fans of 1984’s Ghostbusters a game worthy of the franchise. My other perpetual desire, equally shat upon by Ghostbusters, is that a developer might find a way to elevate “free to play” games into something which do more than exploit brain hacks for profit.

Like all “free to play” games, the devil of Ghostbusters is in the details. For the first few minutes, the game isn’t bad. Do you remember Scott from the original Ghostbusters movie? Scott’s the possibly psychic guy who Bill Murray repeatedly shocked for three hours as a means of getting a blonde co-ed in the sack. Well Scott, aided by a mysterious ghostly figure, is out for some revenge against Peter Venkman and island of Manhattan.

Things start to go wrong when Ghostbusters oh-so-subtly reveals that anybody intent on playing the game for free will not be playing as one of the real Ghostbusters. Unlocking either Peter, Ray, Egon, or Winston will cost five dollars. Unless would-be busters are will to shell out twenty dollars for an actual Ghostbusters experience, be prepared to spend your time controlling Michelle Ying, Egon’s anime haired half-step-niece, Tara Fitzpatrick, a generic smart girl, and Michael Prince, a younger Winston who boasts “a MBA in Business”.

Hey, writers at Beeline, the department of redundancy department is on the phone, and they want to talk to you.

Seriously though, if I wanted fake Ghostbusters, I’d just go watch that 80s cartoon, based on the 70s TV show where Abbott and Costello team up with Dr. Zaius to investigate the paranormal.

Even if die hard devotees are willing to spend a fin to unlock their favourite Ghostbuster, they’re not going to find much substance in the actual game play. Assuming a person can endure an endless loop of Elmer Bernstein’s Ghostbusters Main Title Theme, the game breaks down into two parts. The main story requires players to collect slime, yes I said slime, so they can unslime the stairwells of a fifty floor building where Scott and the big bad have taken up residence. To collect slime a would-be buster responds to calls throughout Manhattan. And before you get excited at the prospect of trapping some class five free formed vaporous apparitions, the game’s ghosts are some of the most uninspired creations, ever. So far I’ve busted ghost rats, ghost guys in a hospital gowns, ghost football players, and ghost cheerleaders. This stinks of Beeline recycling sprites from their other games. I’m not expecting a Golgothan Shit Monster, but something that actually resembles a ghost might not be too much of a stretch for the Ghostbusters.

Then there’s the gameplay, itself. In short, it’s the sort of experience suitable for a nine year old recovering from a frontal lobotomy. When a ghost comes on the screen, the player draws a line from buster to phantasm. The selected ghostbuster will then attack the ghost with either a proton pack, slime blower, or magic healing gun which doubles as a proton pack. Once the ghost is worn down, players must tap the trap button. Rinse and repeat from six to a dozen times per level. When the slime threshold is met, the team uses the anti-slime (or whatever the hell it’s called) to remove the slime in the hotel and move up another level. Once there, they unlock some upgrades and find out their next slime quota.

And so it goes.

Let’s review. Beeline has taken this…

 

…and turned it into a game of connect the very slowly moving dots. Super fun. Rarely do I look at a modern game and think to myself, “Man I miss the Atari 2600 version.” At least that one required some finesse to catch the slimers.

But wait, there’s more. Ghostbusters comes with all the hallmarks of a bad facebook game circa 2008. Player actions are subject to “energy” which requires real time to refill (unless you want to pay to get more time). Upgrades require hours to research, as well as non-premium in-game currency, as to ensure cheapskates among the audience feel suitably motivated to part coin from hand for instant gratification. It’s all the tedium, push notifications, and skinner boxing a person could expect from something “free”, only now the formula is being applied to my much beloved Ghostbusters. It’s a punch in the stomach to the fans, old and young, who deserve better than this exploitation of brand recognition.

In the end, Ghostbusters iOS is tired and derivative affair. It smacks of lazy game design and unrepentant appropriation. Though I suppose there is some level of meta-irony in play as Peter Venkman was the first in line to squeeze money out of unwitting rubes. Regardless, Beeline Interactive can consider me their Walter Peck, because if I had things my way I would shut this whole game down.


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Game Review: NRA Practice Range

By
Adam Shaftoe
– January 16, 2013Posted in: Game Reviews

As fans of BioWare’s Mass Effect series know, indoctrination is an ugly word. Prior to gaining a Reaper related pop culture meaning, indoctrination was often used in the same sentence as fringe cults, militias comprised of child soldiers, and organizations known for mobilizing hate in the name of eugenics and social “reform”.

So let’s put a pin in the fact that the NRA’s Practice Range iOS game is nothing but a shameless attempt at indoctrination from America’s “legitimate” gun culture; the self-same gun culture which proclaims the right to own an M-16 is somehow protected under a constitution which predates the wholesale adoption of indoor plumbing by about sixty years.

I suppose I should also put a pin in any discussion on the high irony of the NRA releasing a shooting game when the organisation’s Vice President recently referred to the game industry as “…a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and stows violence against its own people.”

And even if I am being over dramatic in labeling NRA Practice Range as indoctrination, it’s hard to see the game as anything other than an attempt to normalize the “legitimate” role of the NRA within American society. Case in point, during the game’s oddly extensive loading screens Practice Range offers fun facts about the history of the NRA, as well as pro-tips for gun safety. I like number 8,

“Never use alcohol or drugs before or while shooting.”

Clearly there is some sort of educational/promotional agenda at hand. Yet no amount of warm fuzzy feelings on the topic of responsible gun ownership/use can make up for the fact that this game is absolutely abysmal. Indeed the half-cocked nature of Practice Range smacks of rushed spin doctoring rather than any sort of genuine attempt to build bridges with gamers (or their parents) receptive to the NRA’s ideology.

Practice Range offers three modes of play: indoor range, outdoor range, and skeet shooting. In theory the game makes use of iDevice gyroscopes to set cross hairs over various targets. The problem is that there is no way to calibrate the game to a device’s natural orientation. Even when I launched the app and navigated its sluggish menus with my iPhone at an ideal playing position, I still had to make the screen near to parallel to the floor before my gun would aim up or down. Attempting to play the game with analog controls is no better. The aiming control is utterly clumsy, and there is a noticeable lag between tapping the fire button and the gun actually doing something.

And despite all the game’s pretensions otherwise, I do not see how an M-16 is an appropriate outdoor range gun.

If the game alone were not enough of a public black eye for the NRA, so much so that I expect it will probably be pulled from the app store before long, NRA Practice Range goes so far as to adopt the much loathed business model of micro-transactions. Hey, National Rifle Associaiton, here’s a pro-tip for you in case you ever make another sortie into edutaining the masses: the message may be better received if it isn’t partnered with shameless attempts at making a cheap buck. If this app truly is an exercise in damage control, then the sheer chutzpah of monetizing it is almost beyond description.

Amid constant crashes, a level of sluggishness befitting overweight house cats, and a pointlessness to the game play which in any other circumstance would rightly abjure its own existence, NRA Practice Range is among the worst apps ever released for the iOS. No amount of irony, curiosity (morbid or otherwise), or whimsy should necessitate downloading this game. Even as a means of mobilizing gaming as a tool for outreach, NRA Practice Range has all the charm of a bad Human Resources training video. I regret the bandwidth spent on downloading this game, and the time invested in playing it. And try as I might, I can only imagine chumps and true believers spending  .99 cents here and there to unlock various content for this mobile propaganda platform.

On the up side, given the ease with which “range” can be typo’d into “rage”, I expect it is only a matter of time before subversive derivative works appear on the app store.


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Post #400 and The Best of 2012

By
Adam Shaftoe
– December 17, 2012Posted in: Game Reviews, Lit Reviews, Movie Reviews, TV Reviews, Web Series Reviews

400 posts. Isn’t that something? It seems like only two and a half years ago I was drinking scotch and thinking, “I should start a review website. Nobody in the history of the internet has ever done one of those before.”

Of course, I couldn’t have done it on my own. Along the way I’ve had the pleasure of hosting guest posts from Matt Moore, Rollen Lee, K.W. Ramsey, and Matt Leaver. During that time we must have been doing something right because this year’s numbers doubled to roughly 5500 unique visitors per month. Granted those aren’t Scalzi or Wheaton numbers, but whatever, I’ll get there, and then Middle Earth shall feel my wrath…or there will be cake – either or, really.

So given the auspicious number of this post, and the fact that I’m on vacation starting next week, today seems an ideal time to do my best in genre of 2012.

Best Big Budget Video Game

XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Firaxis Games

Rebooting Julian Gollop’s classic 1994 turn based strategy game, X-Com: UFO Defence was a gutsy move on the part of Firaxis and 2K Games. On the one hand, anybody old enough to remember the source material is no longer part of the gaming industry’s target audience. Moreover, nobody makes turn based strategy games in a market dominated by first/third person shooters and sports titles. Yet Firaxis managed to pull it off. They streamlined classic X-Com’s clunky features, maintained the suspense and often punishing difficulty, and ultimately delivered an experience which pairs action with player driven narrative.

Best Indie Game

FTL, Subset Games

FTL is a rogue-like starship simulator. Similar to XCOM, FTL features persistent consequences and permanent death. Unlike XCOM, a single game of FTL only takes about two hours from start to finish. During that time players will command a starship on a mission to save the Federation from a looming rebellion. FTL puts a premium on resource management and strategy driven starship combat. Though the game’s objective always remains the same, no two playthroughs will ever be the same. Much of this replay factor can be attributed to FTL’s procedurally generated galaxy, variety of ships to command, and a huge pool of random events. Simple, elegant, and challenging in extremis FTL is not a title to be missed.

Best Novel

Rasputin’s Bastards, David Nickle

I’m almost certain the book isn’t an attempt on the part of ChiZine Publications and author David Nickle to subconsciously program an army of sleeper agents. That said, there are times when Rasputin’s Bastards feels like a twenty-first century answer to Catch-22. Both books are complex, revel in asynchronous storytelling, and left this reader eager to reread if only to mine for details, subtexts, and plot threads missed on a first read through. The novel also boasts a moral ambiguity in its characters which defies an easy D&D style alignment. Despite their various plans and machinations, some of which still don’t quite make sense to me, a reader can walk away from the book with a real sense of empathy for all the players involved. The Cold War might have been a lot of things, but before David Nickle’s treatment I don’t know if it has ever been quite so metaphysical.

Best Movie

Dredd

Yeah that’s right, I said Dredd. The Avengers has got enough people kissing its billion dollar ass. Dredd was the movie that nobody, save for dedicated weirdoes like yours truly, ever wanted. Despite utterly under performing at the box office, Dredd remains an accessible action movie after the hard “R” rated fashion of Die Hard. It skillfully brings an uninitiated viewer into the entropy of Mega City One, while remaining true enough to the source material to appease a veteran audience. As ever with Judge Joe Dredd, the writing remains a serious study on urban crime and civil liberties as seen through a set of extraordinary circumstances. Karl Urban as Dredd offers a unique sort of black comedy amid the action. Lena Headey delivers a brilliant performance as a cold calculating drug lord. While one special effect does get used a bit much, viewers can take solace in the fact that Dredd doesn’t spend fifteen minutes fixing an engine.

Best TV

NB: Live action genre TV sucked the devil’s ass in 2012. It should be telling that my only candidates for this category were animated series.

TRON: Uprising

Would that the story of TRON: Uprising was told in TRON: Legacy fans might have got the sequel they deserved. Despite the Disney branding, Uprising frames the back story of Legacy as a narrative of insurgency within the Grid. It’s poignant in ways that The Clone Wars can be when exploring stories involving the clone troopers and not their Jedi generals. At some point, we know Tron, voiced magnificently by Bruce Boxleitner, is going to end up as Rinzler, CLU’s mindless growling stooge. This foreknowledge makes his struggle against General Tessler, voiced with style by Lance Henriksen, and his search for redemption in training Beck (Elijah Wood) as the new Tron all the more bitter sweet. Meanwhile the writers are free to derezz and destroy to their heart’s content as the series’ cast, save for Tron, are external to the world of Legacy.

Best Web Series

Job Hunters

This is another tough call. Husbands remains one of the funniest things on the internet. Though I only recently discovered Clutch, it’s quickly become one of the most powerful things I’ve seen online. But where those shows entered their second season in 2012, Job Hunters debuted this year. I didn’t know what to expect in a series which described itself as a “dystopian roommate comedy”. Truth be told, I was bracing for terrible. Instead, I saw a series which tapped into the frustration of college graduates entering an outsourced and depressed job market. The series takes job hunting quite literally where grads become gladiators who fight for a position with the corporations of the world. Drawing inspiration from Rollerball as much as it does The Hunger Games, Job Hunters is looks great, sounds as good as any mainstream production, and uses both comedy and violence to explore a social phenomenon.

There we have it, my best of 2012 in the 400th post.

My deepest thanks to everybody who continues to read and support this website. Your comments, facebook likes, and retweets are as good as gold to me. Until the day when somebody starts paying me to write for a living, approbation and kudos are my bread and butter.

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My Dark Souls Conversion

By
Adam Shaftoe
– December 3, 2012Posted in: Game Reviews

Last year I received two video games as Christmas presents: Batman: Arkham City and Dark Souls. Though I hadn’t played either game, I was confident I would like both. I was half right, at first.

Friends boasted about Dark Souls length and punishing difficulty; I called them noobs. I touted conquests like Final Fantasy (NES), Master of Orion (PC), and Colony Wars (PS1) as proof of my gaming epicocity. “If a game beats me,” I would begin, “it’s because of bad design, not any lack of skills on my part.”

Braggadocio thy name is Adam.

Equal parts fear and dread seized me upon discovering Dark Souls was developed by the Japanese studio “From Software”. I flashed back to over a decade of failed attempts to master the pointlessly byzantine Armoured Core series of robot combat games. “Bad design, that’s why I quit those games.” I muttered.

Steeling myself, I dove into Dark Souls. I lasted about five minutes before seeing the following words.

YOU DIED.

Those two words came to haunt me. Over and over they would flash on the screen as undead minions and massive Lovecraft meets Japanese tentacle porn uber-demons gallivanted over my corpse. I started a new character. I tried new tactics. I took different paths through the game’s open world.

YOU DIED.

YOU DIED .

YOU DIED.

and YOU DIED.

I took the game out of my Xbox, gave it the finger, and fired up Arkham City. Sure, there were moments when I led Batman to his death. Yet losing in a 20 vs 1 street brawl never felt quite so demoralizing as one of Dark Souls’ nameless minions running me through with a rusty sword.

Two weeks ago I was playing Star Trek Catan at a friend’s house. Wherein another friend informed the group he had taken up Dark Souls and, against all odds, was enjoying it. I was sceptical.

Since giving Dark Souls the finger I had found other critical voices who had spoken out against the game. I thought myself all the more clever for writing off Dark Souls as an exercise in self-flagellation after five hours, rather than making a chump of myself and playing through the whole 100 hour affair a la Roger Ebert. Yet my friend was convinced I needed to give the game another shot.

I said there was no story.

I said it was a shameless farce meant to inflate an otherwise simple (and short) game.

I said there’s no art to a game which only appeals to a handful of compulsive lunatics willing to spend 100 hours for the sake of unlocking an achievement.

Matt just smiled his idiot knowing smile and said, “Give it another try.”

So last week, high on cough medicine and boredom, I gave it a go.

Guess what happened?

YOU DIED.

“Fuck this shit right in the ear,” I said aloud as the words crossed my screen.

Then something interesting happened. In an attempt to piss take, I fell back on an old Warcraft/Starcraft habit. Rather than speaking to NPCs (Non Player Characters) once and moving on, I kept clicking the “talk to” button. And instead of getting mad at me, or killing me – because everything else in the game seemed intent on ramming a spear up my ass – they revealed useful information. The world of Dark Souls, and more importantly my part in it, began to make some small bit of sense.

You see, I’m the sort of gamer who craves narrative. Dark Souls hints at a grand fantasy setting with its opening cut scene, but then provides nothing else in the way of exposition or purpose. There’s nothing in the manual. There are no in-game tutorials. Since I didn’t know what I was doing, why I was doing it, or how being undead (the game’s character is a sapient undead who fights “hollow” zombies and demons – don’t ask, it’s complicated) factored into game mechanics like humanity points, there was no investment on my part. All I saw was a game intent on breaking my balls and making me feel bad about myself. I don’t need that from a video game, that’s why I have in-laws.

The revelation that Dark Souls has a story, albeit a story I had to earn, kept me playing a little longer. Therein I discovered something else missed in my first play through: Dark Souls has a pretty fantastic combat system.

Dark Souls combat stems from a first principle: you, the player, protagonist, and hero, are not special. You’re not Batman, Sephiroth, or Ryu Hayabusa. You are an undead escaped from the undead asylum, nothing more. Because of that, a couple of well placed stabs, cuts, or smashes will kill you.

I was frail.

I have been the indestructible Master Chief, the one in a million person immune to zombie bites, and the immortal Master of Orion. Dark Souls has the nerve to make art imitate life by turning me into something soft and weak.

Though the game hints at becoming stronger, tempting the player with high level weapon descriptions during load screens, I, Shaftoe the Mighty, was a fragile little newbie in a big bad world. I had to set aside years of gamer impulses and actually duel with each nameless grunt who stood between me and the boss.

Even now, after ten hours of play resulting in a character who can effectively use a halberd with one hand while working a kite shield with the other, I still have to be respectful of my foes. Sure I can one-shot a lot of generic baddies, but my level 23 character only has marginally more health than I did as a level 6 character. A single sword cut against me matters in Dark Souls in ways other 3rd person sword play games would never dream.

Now it seems hard not to appreciate the design elegance in a game which demands a twitch inclined button mashing audience slow down to think their way through combat. On a practical level, a cautious approach to playing Dark Souls makes death less of a chore and more of natural barrier within an open world game. When Dark Souls started killing me, my inclination was to get angry and have another go at the beast which dared to cross swords with an all powerful User. Then I would die again. In doing so I would lose the unspent experience points/humanity left behind in the essence of my last incarnation. Gamer rage became my own worst enemy. In slowing down and thinking, I approached death with a measure of Zen. Once reborn I would return to the remains of my last self, literally reclaim the experience of my past life, and set a new course away from the mechanism of my previous demise.

Thus Dark Souls is not a game about grinding, persistence, and tilting at windmills. It’s an exercise in caution, restraint, accepting one’s own limits – temporary though they may be – and checking one’s ego at the title screen. Played like any other action game, the likes of which hinge upon convincing the player they are somehow special, I can see why it might require 100 hours to complete Dark Souls. Yet now I feel confident anybody could finish the game faster if they purge themselves of any sense of exceptionalism and adjust their approach to suit Dark Souls’ philosophy.

And that’s the story of how I came to appreciate a game I’d once written off as a pointless endeavour in making mountains out of a mole hill.

My name is Adam, and I was wrong about Dark Souls.


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Game Review: Plague Inc.

By
Adam Shaftoe
– November 16, 2012Posted in: Game Reviews

Where many smart phone games offer all the complexity of an Atari 2600 release, Plague Inc. is something different. Indeed, calling Ndemic Creations’ freshman title a “game” may be an injustice. Plague Inc. is very much a strategic simulation. The player’s goal is simple: exterminate every human life on the Earth through manipulating the DNA of a plague.

(Insert evil scientist laugh)

As a veteran of Defcon, an understated PC game where players score points through delivering atomic death to millions of people, I thought I knew what it took to visit suffering upon the world. Yet in my first play through of Plague Inc, I only managed to wipe out a paltry three and a half billion people. Realistically, killing half the Earth’s population over the course over two years would probably be enough to destroy civilization as we know it. Yet Plague Inc. demands nothing less than perfection in the form of complete human genocide.

Evolving a bacteria/virus/prion from localised infection to wholesale pandemic may sound complicated, but Plague Inc. makes the dreams of lunatic scientists and bio-terrorists alike complete child’s play. Much of the simulation unfolds over a two dimensional map of the world. From there players pick a country/region to deploy patient zero. I generally like to start with China or India, but I’ve come close to winning with an outbreak originating in the United States.

As the simulation moves forward, a few quick time events will allow players an opportunity to score additional DNA points, which they will then use to evolve their super bug. Herein, Plauge Inc becomes a game of resource management. Do you tailor your creation to endure harsh climates and antibiotics? What vector(s) for infection will you use? And most important of all, how will you make humanity suffer? With the symptoms built as a sprawling and interconnected tech tree, the game allows for some pretty colourful misery. At one point I had a water borne bacteria, whose symptoms included vomiting and dysentery, ravaging the world. Plague Inc. then informed me I had unlocked an explosive projectile vomiting/voiding perk, which further increased the infectivity of my monster.

Naturally the nations of the world work against the player to defend humanity. Granted, it’s relatively easy to infect countless millions while staying under the World Health Organization’s radar. However, once an outbreak becomes “scary” by mutating too quickly or developing too many new vectors, the simulation reacts more aggressively. Players can try to stymie the AI’s race to a cure, but every shred of DNA spent on forestalling a vaccine takes away from the bug’s ability to infect and kill.

From start to finish, an entire simulation lasts about half an hour, which when it comes to destroying humanity is a perfect time investment. Every successful genocide unlocks a new plague type as well as various mutations for patient zero. And yes, the developers have hinted at a zombie apocalypse virus in a future update. While Plague Inc. does allow for some in-app purchases, a concept I hate on principle, these buys are limited to immediately unlocking things which can be obtained through winning. Moreover, these are all one-time purchases, not opportunities for the company to generate infinite income a la Zynga.

In the end Plague Inc. is a perfect example of what mobile gaming is capable of doing when it positions itself outside of the box. It’s part (semi) scientific simulation as well as a thoughtful resource management game. Though the goal always remains the same, there’s enough variety built into the core mechanics as to afford it an exceptional replay value. I will say the entire experience requires a greater than average amount of cognitive dissonance as to make wiping out humanity a recreational activity. In my weaker moments, I actually felt sorry for the planet as the death count ticked past three billion, and the nations of the world fell into anarchy. Priced at 99 cents, there is no reason not to pick up Plague Inc..

Plague Inc. is developed by Ndemic Creations. It is currently available on iTunes and Google Play for Apple and Android devices.


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Video Game Review: Hands-on with Halo 4

By
Adam Shaftoe
– November 9, 2012Posted in: Game Reviews

NB: This will not be a comprehensive review of Halo 4. I’ve logged more than enough time for a first impressions post, but not quite enough to feel comfortable rendering a final verdict. Moreover, I feel it impossible to talk about Halo 4 without spending some words on its predecessor games, for reasons which only serve to inform my own critical perspective. Interesting as that may be, I won’t be offended if readers skip down to where I’ve indicated the actual Halo 4 discussion begins.

Even before I bought Halo 4 I had some reservations. For me, the Halo series has always been something of a work in progress. I don’t mean to suggest there was ever anything particularly wrong with the games. The original Halo, released in 2001, was something of a game changer for first person shooters. The single player game was vast in terms of design and storytelling. Its multiplayer was no less polished, and a fine example of what Xbox Live could accomplish, though it would take several years before XBL’s grasp matched its ambitious reach. Within the video game industry, I position Halo as the birth of impressionism out of neo-classicism. And like any other work of art, the series evolved over time.

Fast forward to 2010. It had been three years since the Master Chief’s story came to an end in Halo 3. Since then Bungie and Microsoft released the Halo 3 companion piece, Halo 3: ODST, to soft applause from the fans. Though not a terrible game, there were some charges of a cash grab from the audience. On the night before Bungie and Microsoft released Halo: Reach, a prequel to the first Halo game, I feared another effort into the well charted waters of ODST.

Yet, Reach surprised me. Even though Reach brought the Halo story full-circle back to Halo 1, just in time for Microsoft to launch a HD 10th anniversary edition, it also demonstrated there was still life to the franchise. We see this truth reflected in Bungie’s decision to focus on Spartans other than the Master Chief. These were Spartans who took their helmets off and in doing so became actual characters.

Certainly part of Halo’s appeal rests in the ubiquity of the Master Chief. Since we never see his face, anybody can imagine themselves as the Chief. But there was something to be said in Bungie’s decision to use actual human faced characters to weave a story about losing home and family to the vicissitudes of war. Meanwhile if Halo 3’s multiplayer was stellar, Reach’s felt nothing short of perfect. There was so much going on in the multiplayer that my gaming group spent every Wednesday night for a year engrossed in Reach. A person hasn’t lived until they’ve spent two hours playing Griffball.

My point here is that even if Bungie, and not Microsoft’s in-house 343 Industries, had built Halo 4, I imagine they would struggle to match the coup de gras effort of Reach. Reach was the culmination of one studio working through ten years worth of successes and challenges.

*Acutal Halo 4 content starts now*

Bearing all this in mind, let us start with an overview of Halo 4’s fundamentals. The good news is that 343i has not made any changes which break the game. So far, Halo 4 feels like a worthy successor to both Halo 3 and Halo: Reach. Obviously, the game play is rather linear, but nobody plays Halo for a sandbox experience. The core mechanics of running, shooting, lobbing grenades, and driving vehicles remain very much intact and quite enjoyable.

With respect to the story, Halo 4 has learned some lessons from Reach. Where Halo 1-3 held a gun to the collective head of humanity in the form of an unstoppable alien invasion, Halo 4 is driven by a more relatable conflict. Put simply, Cortana is dying.

After spending four years drifting through space in the wreckage of the Forward Unto Dawn, Cortana’s a year past her AI expiry date and on the verge of going insane. Despite the threat of rogue Covenant and ancient aliens mucking about in a Forerunner Dyson Sphere, the fate of humanity takes the background as the Chief searches for a way back to Earth so that the UNSC might save Cortana.

This new “save the princess, Mario” dynamic between the Chief and Cortana introduces a giant unholy mess of gender/plot issues which I could discuss at length. However, for the sake of time I’ll table said discussion. Instead I’ll limit my comment to this: if nothing else Halo 4’s story offers some stakes which are perhaps more accessible than the generic vagaries of aliens intent to kill us all.

Visually, 343i has made a few changes to Halo’s look. Leaving alone, for now, Cortana’s tendency to be slightly more sexy and pouty with each passing game, the Covenant, though recognizable, have had a bit of a face lift. See here a comparison of the “grunts” from Halo: Reach (left) to Halo 4 (right).

Something's different...new hair cut?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Though certainly recognizable, the new grunts have some softer angles on their armour, a changed respirator (a constant since Halo 1), and a slightly more amphibious look about them. Are these good changes? Who knows. Said question is a matter of personal aesthetic and taste. What’s important is that their behaviour and combat tactics remain unchanged. The same can be said for the Elites, Jackals, and Destroyers. Thus we see another example of how 343i is keeping true to the essence of Halo.

But where I’m content to enjoy the changes 343i has made to Halo’s visual sensibilities, especially in classy moves like leaving the classic Bungie logo as the Forerunner glyph for “Reclaimer”, I have some reservations about their changes to the game’s aural quality. In short, Halo 4 doesn’t quite sound right. Much of this is due to the fact that for the first time ever Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori didn’t work on the game’s soundtrack. Gone is the heavy orchestral work, deep thrumming bass and drums, and now ubiquitous Gregorian chant.

 

The new soundtrack by Neil Davidge has something of a Gladiator feel to it. It runs the gamut between beautifully melodic but intense and urgent. In any other game, I would be praising Mr. Davidge for his work. Yet this isn’t any other game. It’s Halo, and Halo has a certain sound to it. As I play the single player campaign I keep waiting to hear a familiar drum beat or chant, but alas it never comes.

Even the weapons fire sounds different compared to Halo’s past incarnations. Not wrong, per se, but different and alien. Again, in any other game, I wouldn’t see fit to commit these thoughts to paper. But I know hard core fans of the franchise are going to point to these differences and scream, “You’re killin’ me, Smalls.”

Perhaps the relationship between O’Donnel-Savatori’s traditional music and Davidge’s new approach is similar to what fans of Star Trek felt the first time they heard Jerry Goldsmith’s intro instead of Alexander Courage’s expected refrain. In the fullness of time, Davidge may become Halo’s new gold standard. For now his music is out of place. Granted it’s not a deal breaker, but it’s definitely enough to fuel some righteous nerd rage.

Shifting gears to multiplayer, the changes from Bungie to 343i are largely cosmetic. After a meagre 20 rounds or so of Slayer, the matchmaking system seems quite effective. There’s a good variety in the game types, though it’s quite obvious to see how standard Slayer mode caters ever-so-slightly to the Modern Warfare/Medal of Honour crowd. Certainly the Red vs Blue aspect remains the same, but now there are customizable weapons load outs and in-game equipment drops. But where the former titles only reward kill streaks, Halo 4 has seen fit to make bonuses cumulative to a match. Therefore, even the greenest noob can still get a power weapon every once in a while.

Hopefully 343i rolls out matchmaking for community made maps, as Bungie did with Halo Reach. Though said options are absent as of this review, the Halo 4 community is only days old. Even Reach’s multiplayer couldn’t boast of all its robust features straight out of the gate. With the iconic forge system in play, I have high hopes. As long as Microsoft doesn’t default to the “you must buy everything” approach of Dice and EA in the Battlefield series, I see no reason why Halo 4’s multiplayer should be any less successful than Reach or Halo 3.

So let’s bring this beast of a post home. Is Halo 4 different from previous games in the Halo series? Yes and no. When it comes to core game play mechanics and Halo-esque story telling, this is Halo at its finest. There are, however, some noticeable changes to sound and aesthetics. I wouldn’t call them an insult to the memory of past games, but long time fans will be in for a bit of a surprise. Some aspects of the multiplayer, mostly grenades, will require a bit of an adjustment period for Reach vets. But overall, the online battle is a familiar experience even if it does cater to the odd aspect of Modern Warfare’s player reward mechanics. Ultimately 343i has done an admirable job taking up Bungie’s mantle, and thus living up to near-impossible expectations. Yet as it was with Halo 3 and Halo: Reach, I think the true test will come in how 343i supports the game in the months to follow.


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