Leveling Down

While Blazblue doesn’t have a good automatching system, it has several features that I applaud.

1) Quarter matches for up to 6 players
Quarter matches are already kind of a given, in this day and age for online fighting games but it’s definitely nice that it’s here. The only tricky thing is joining a room before a game starts since once a game is already in play, you can’t join and it basically means you have a 5 second window to join a room.

2) Disconnects listed on player profile
For a while, Street Fighter IV didn’t list disconnects in a player’s record. Thus, when they’re close to losing a match, they simply reset their console to avoid either getting a loss, or simply just to prevent you from getting a win. A later patch put the disconnect % in, but I’m glad that BlazBlue has it in from the start. Listing a player’s disconnects helps to dissuade players from disconnecting, since you don’t have to play people with high disconnect %’s.

3) No “ranking down” upon losing
In Street Fighter IV, if you lost a match against someone at your level or lower, you would lose a relatively signficant amount of points to your ranking. This would in turn contribute to high level players disconnecting if they’re about to lose to lower level ones, or higher level players just not wanting to play lower level ones at all since they practically gain nothing if they win, but lose a lot if they lose. In BlazBlue, you can never go down in ranking, so if you’re a high level player and lose to a level 1, you lose nothing. At the same time, the level 1 player that defeats the high level player gets a lot more points and moves closer to his true level. So in a sense, the ranking in BlazBlue is accurate because it takes into combination skill and experience and should be the way to go for all fighting games.

4) Hidden character selections
I wish this was done more often in online fighting games. In games such as Street Fighter IV, in a ranked match one player will often try to wait until the other player has chose which character to be and then he chooses a character to counter that player. In a sense, the player that picks second always has the advantage, and I always felt it was unfair. Well, in BlazBlue, when you choose a character to play for online, it won’t show you who the opponent has picked until after you’ve both selected – then it displays the matchup. Genius and fair.

Of course, BlazBlue’s online isn’t perfect – I’m not a fan of awarding ranked points during player matches or the lack of real matchmaking (you have to try to join rooms), but it makes several strides forward in how online fighting games should be. And maybe this is specific to me, but when you want to start playing as a new character, you’re stuck with your “high ranking’, so it’s hard to find decent matches. Lower level players think my level is too high, so they just kick me from rooms even though I’m trying a new character, and higher level players try fighting my new character once before kicking me thinking I suck. I wish I could just reset my rank back to 1 given I can’t rank down, but I guess I still prefer the ranking system here than in Street Fighter IV.

With rumblings that a slim PS3 is going to be announced for $300 imminent, part of me is considering whether it will be the time to jump back in. For longtime readers of my game blog, I actually bought a PS3 back when Metal Gear Solid 4 was initially released. After having Hideo Kojima sign my copy of the game, I was sad once I got home since I couldn’t even play it. I ended up buying a PS3 with a deal that allowed me to buy a 40 GB PS3 for $400 and receive a $100 Best Buy gift card, netting things out to about $300 for the 40 GB model. So now if the PS3 slim goes for $300, this isn’t exactly a much cheaper price than I had bought it for last summer.

But have times changed? There are rumors that this slim will have software backwards compatibility, 160 GB, 4 USB ports, and a Dualshock controller. It’s definitely an upgrade over my brief time with the 40 GB and its lack of backwards compatibility, only 2 USB ports, and a SixAxis controller. And with the 360 Elite rumored to drop to $299.99 and the PS3 much cheaper to manufacture these days, this lends some credibility to a PS3 selling for $300 to try to catch up with the 360′s lead. Yet, have there been enough games released between then and now to warrant the new purchase?

I went ahead and compiled a list of titles exclusive to the system that I am interested in playing, and here is what I would consider:

LittleBigPlanet
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Killzone 2
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
Ninja Gaiden Sigma
Resistance 2
Valkyria Chronicles
Resistance: Fall of Man
inFAMOUS
Heavenly Sword

for the immediate future:
Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time

Do any of these titles really stand out for me? I like Ratchet & Clank and Ninja Gaiden, but these Ninja Gaiden Sigma games are just rehashes of the original ones I’ve played on the Xbox/360 already, and Ratchet & Clank is not really enough to buy a new console over. People seem to love Uncharted, but when I played it I was bored since it seemed like Tomb Raider. And Killzone 2 may be a good game, but with Halo 3 ODST and Modern Warfare 2 coming out around the corner, will Killzone 2 even matter then? Valkyria Chronicles may be the only major title I’m interested in! I guess based on this list, I can afford to wait until next year, giving the PS3 a chance to get more interesting exclusive titles and perhaps drop in price again or bundle in games.

How about the rest of you? Is $300 the magic PS3 price point? And what about those of you that have neither the 360 or PS3 yet? If they’re both going for $300, which is better? PS3′s wi-fi & Blu-Ray, or 360′s Live and Netflix integration?

If it hasn’t been obvious, I’ve been pretty obsessed with adventure games for the bulk of the summer. Between Phoenix Wright (essentially an adventure game in text form) and Monkey Island 1 & 2 (classic point and click), I’ve been gobbling up adventure games non-stop. I decided to check out the demo for Sam & Max Save the World - an episodic adventure series by Telltale featuring a deadpan dog (Sam) and a partially insane and violent rabbit (Max), two freelance cops who go about….saving the world.

The demo encompasses the bulk of the 1st episode (there are 6 total), and ends at a pretty exciting point. I almost bought the game right then and there but held off since I’ll be out of town. I judge adventure games by two things and two things only: humor and the difficulty of the puzzles.

As for humor, Sam and Max are decently funny, although the voice acting left something to be desired. There are definitely some funny lines, especially if you click on every single thing you see. The puzzles seemed relatively easy, I never had that many items so it just became a quick trial and error, although some of the puzzle solutions did lead to a few amusing sequences. Overall I thought the 1st episode was pretty serviceable, not as good as Monkey Island but pretty solid gameplay in its own right. There was, however, a driving sequence that seemed kind of unnecessary and some frame hiccups mar the experience a bit as well.

This demo was my first taste of Sam and Max, and I can see why they are so popular. They definitely have a lot of character and the game doesn’t take itself very seriously, so I think there’s a lot of fun to be had in the 6 unique episodes that make up Sam and Max Save the World. At 1600 MS points ($20), that’s a pretty good deal considering you’ll probably get 12-15 hours of gameplay out of it. I’m not totally sold at this point, but that’s more a function of having other things to play right now and not indicative of the quality of the game. One night when I’m really bored I will probably end up paying for the full version. If you’re looking for more adventure gaming on the 360 or PC, go ahead and check out the demo, you’ll probably like what you see.

For the record, I loved the game back in college when my buddies and I spent hundreds of hours playing it on the Dreamcast. In fact, we loved playing all of the versus games back in college, but back then, we were all just college kids playing for fun and there were always a lot of us to play with so there was a ton of variety in our matchups.

Now that Marvel vs Capcom 2 has been released on the 360 and is getting pretty good reviews (unlike King of Fighters XII, which is apparently getting destroyed in reviews), I’m considering purchasing it. I downloaded the demo to check it out, and it features just 2-player offline combat with six characters. Not really enough to be a game, but enough to see how the engine holds up in this new generation of TVs and I will say that it looks fine. The gameplay is really frenetic though, and I’ve forgotten how over the top it was with air combos into supers and all that.

The reason I’m most interested in the game is nostalgia. I loved the Marvel vs. Capcom fighting game universe that Capcom created, and enjoy playing with characters like Jill, Omega Red, and several of the X-Men. It’s disheartening to see that of the 50 or so selectable characters, only a small fraction of that number is actually considered playable at a competitive level. So while I want to reminisce with characters I enjoy, if I were to play the game long enough, all I’d probably end up seeing are Magneto, Cable, Storm, and Sentinel. This game is 9 years old – and it’s pretty much established already. At this point, if I want to invest enough into the game, I will have to either figure out a way to beat Magneto’s infinite with my low-tier characters, or learn to play Magneto myself. Not a huge fan of either decision. Blah…

But it’s only $15 right? Hrm, even after writing this, I’m still on the fence. Maybe I should get through BlazBlue first before picking up another fighting game. And maining Carl Clover is certainly helping with the possible transition to Marvel vs Capcom 2.

A few months ago, the 2009 fall/holiday lineup looked something like this: Splinter Cell: Conviction, BioShock 2, Guitar Hero 5, Halo 3: ODST, Forza 3, Modern Warfare 2, Uncharted 2, Ghost Recon 4, Heavy Rain, Brutal Legend, Red Steel 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Bayonetta, Dark Void, etc. etc. etc. On top of all that, optimistic gamers were hopeful that Starcraft 2′s first installment would hit before Christmas as well. Alas, it was not meant to be. In what can only be described as an epidemic, title after title has been delayed until 2010 and beyond.

Whether it’s the economy, publishers wanting to avoid the glut of games at the holidays, or both, for some reason everyone has been pushing back their release dates. Frankly, that’s just fine with me. Last year’s holiday was a complete overload and overkill, there were so many amazing games out that I had to push some games like Mirror’s Edge back four months. Other games, like Dead Space, I never ended up getting around to finish. I was worried that I’d have to pick and choose a lot again this fall, but luckily a lot of those decisions have been made for me. Now I can concentrate on 2 or 3 games (or just Modern Warfare 2) without feeling like I’m missing out.

So, for the record:

Games I’m definitely getting: Halo 3: ODST, Modern Warfare 2, Beatles Rock Band (no more plastic tho), Tales of Monkey Island (when the complete season is done), Uncharted 2 (woops, I don’t have a PS3 but I’d get it if I did)

Games I want but aren’t must have: Left 4 Dead 2, Guitar Hero 5, Brutal Legend

Games I’m interested in: Borderlands, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Mario and Luigi DS

Games I’m sad to see get pushed back: Starcraft 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Heavy Rain (again, PS3 only), Bioshock 2

Hopefully, all the games that got pushed back will be better off for it. Ultimately, I think these delays are probably good for games, more spread out releases means less gems getting lost in the shuffle. I’ll just have to learn some patience in the mean time.

P.S. – If you’re interested, 1up has compiled a list of the notable delays. Also if I’ve forgotten anything please point it out!

The Batman Arkham Asylum demos hit the 360 and PS3 this past weekend, and I reluctantly downloaded it just to see how it was. The game has been somewhat hyped, but with it being a “licensed game” by an unknown developer and published by the morally questionable Eidos (Tomb Raider, Kane & Lynch), I was wary because that combination has many of the signs that will often end up being a garbage title.

When I first loaded up the game and saw that it was powered by the Unreal Engine 3 (the same engine behind BioShock, Gears of War, and Mass Effect), I was already pleasantly surprised. I thought, “Hmm, this game may not be so bad after all.” The 1.5 GB demo actually showcased a lot of interesting features of the game. It opened somewhat blandly as you played Batman and easily knocked out several unarmed foes. I remember playing that scene in a Best Buy weeks back and walking away unimpressed. I should have stuck around to play further.

The next parts of the demo were what made the game a lot more interesting, as it introduced enemies with firearms (so you couldn’t just rush in and beat them down), your grapple hook (to get yourself quickly above enemies to take them down from the air), stealth takedowns, and a detective mode that functions similarly to the Scan Visor in Metroid Prime, showing you aspects of things you are looking at that you wouldn’t be able to see with the naked eye. You can even see where enemies are positioned, their panic state, etc.

After the first few rooms, the demo concluded with a room where there were five patrolling guards. The objective of the room was to clear out the guards in any way you wanted. It had elements of stealth reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid, but your objective is to take out all of the guys instead of running from them. The first two guards I easily took out with stealth kills, and the third one I used my grappling hook to reach high ground and fly in from above to knock him out. Upon taking out the third guard, the other two guards came running towards the commotion so I quickly disappeared into the dark. They began to panic, and split up, allowing me to take one out when the other one turned a corner. The last guard started really going nuts and shot at anything that was making noise like the steam pipes. This was what made me think, “Wow, I’m having a lot of fun. This really feels like Batman!” I then descended upon the final guard, knocked him out, and proceeded further before the demo concluded.

I have to say, if the demo is a strong indication of the game, it’s looking excellent. And with it coming out in two weeks, it’s definitely now on my radar. And with the fact that Batman is actually an amazing detective, this game could be like BioShock, Splinter Cell, and Condemned all put together for a package full of win. The demo was probably the best one I’ve played in a while, and has practically sold me on the game if it ends up being a good length. If you have any interest in Batman, check it out if you get a chance!

Dawn of Discovery sort of flew in under the radar for me, as it’s a German developed real-time strategy/city-building game that was released on the PC, Wii, and DS. I’ve been spending time with the DS version myself, and have come to the realization that this is perhaps the best real-time strategy or city-building game I’ve ever played on the DS. It’s the first game that I’ve sat around for hours mindlessly playing while my wife shops, and the first game that I’ve played on my train commute to work everyday that makes me sad when I’ve arrived at my stop. If you have any sort of interest in RTS and city-building games, you should look into this gem.

The premise of the game revolves around settling into various islands on the map and expanding cities for people to move in. As you do this, you’re competing with other opponents as well to ramp up your cities with natural resources, gather income from the citizens, and produce military that allows you to engage your opponents. The story mode itself is probably a dozen hours long, and does an amazing job of teaching you the game.

The city building part of the game revolves around “upgrading” your citizens. Lowest level citizens require a church, food, and milk to be happy, so you need to construct a church within a radius of the citizens’ homes, and farms to supply food and milk to the people. In turn, they provide you with taxes. Once all requirements for the basic level are fulfilled, these citizens “upgrade” to the next citizen level, who have higher item difficulty needs such as clothing and the need to be near certain buildings such as a guesthouse. Each citizen level (there are five total) provide higher and higher tax amounts, which behooves the player to run an empire that keeps all of its citizens happy at the highest level, so in turn income from taxes flow in.

Since the game is island based, the player must sail ships (constructed at a shipyard from the wood resource) to expand on new islands, meet important people and nations, or even hunt for treasure chests over open waters while avoiding pirates.

Remakably, the DS interface works very well, allowing you to play the game with just the stylus and selecting on the screen. It also makes me wonder – if it’s this good of a game on the DS, how good can it be on the Wii and the PC? Note that the Wii version is the same price as the DS version: only $30. While the PC version is the definitive home version and has the best polish of the three, its $50 price tag and DRM make the Wii version quite a viable option.

cmfl3x: You fight like a dairy farmer!
Mrsfl3x: How appropriate, you fight like a cow!
cmfl3x: ::falls into ocean::

I burned my $50 of Best Buy credit this weekend to pick up Wii Sports Resort, a game I hope my wife will enjoy and one that will be useful for entertaining house guests. After a few sessions with the game, my impression is very favorable: this is probably a game that every Wii owner should eventually plan on picking up.

The worst thing about Resort is that if you plan on playing with others, you need to buy a second ($20) Wii Motion Plus accessory. One comes packaged with the game, but you really need two to enjoy the experience (just like you had to buy a second controller to enjoy Wii Sports). There’s been a lot of debate about whether Motion Plus could have been included with the original Wii, but for the most part that’s neither here nor there.

What does matter is that Motion Plus works great, it does a much better job of tracking your movements which makes the minigames more challenging, but also more fun. Motion Plus basically gives you 1:1 motion control, which means small movements like twists of your wrist will now factor into things such as how your golf swing slices or your bowling ball spins. There are 12 games included, all of which will appeal to different players. I’ve written about 3 I especially enjoyed, just to give a taste of some of the new games.

Table Tennis
The first game I tried out was table tennis, but I didn’t even get through my first match with the computer before my wife got home. I said, “Surprise! New video game!”, acknowledged the to-be-expected eyeroll, and fired up a second controller so she could play. I found that despite the fact that you can’t move your character, the game does a good job making it feel like you are really playing ping pong. For example, in real life, I use the “Asian” pencil style grip as opposed to a tennis racket grip. I switched to this grip as a joke, but then found out that using my real life technique I can put the same spin on the ball in the game! I’m exclusively using the pencil grip now, and by now the only difference between Resort and a real game of table tennis is the fact that I don’t need to move my legs. Pretty sweet.

Swordplay
This is my wife’s favorite game, mainly because she beat me in 5 out of 7 matches. Yes, it was not my finest hour, especially considering I could only win when I threw Monkey Island insult swordfighting techniques at her. Swordplay is basically an episode of American Gladiators, both fighters have a “sword” and they try to knock their opponent off a circular ring into the ocean below. With Motion Plus, you can attack from different sides, thrust, and with a click of a button you can parry. If you string together combos (attacking from different sides so your opponent doesn’t know which way to block) you can knock someone off the ledge pretty easily. Of course, I only know this because I was the one getting knocked off the ledge. This game is much easier to understand than Wii Boxing was, I can actually figure out how my technique (or lack thereof) leads to what is going on in game. Definitely a lot of fun, although our arms were sore the next morning. There are other iterations of swordfighting included with the game as well.

Frisbee
Frisbee is one of the games that a lot of people don’t seem to like, but we had a pretty good time with it. There are different events (as there are in almost all of the games), and you can throw a frisbee to a dog (target practice) or play frisbee golf. I found the motion tracking pretty good in this game, I basically can throw a frisbee decently 70% of the time, and achieved the same percentage in the game. I had just tossed a disc around that afternoon, so it was pretty fresh in my head.

Parting Thoughts
The best thing I can say about this game is that it’s a lot of fun. Part of the fun comes from the fact that Motion Plus makes it feel like you’re actually playing the sports that are on screen (in most cases). The game is definitely a huge step up from Wii Sports, and a much bigger and satisfying package. I didn’t even get a chance to talk about Archery or the return of Golf, both of which I found very satisfying. Long story short, pick up this game if you own a Wii. As my friend LargeLobster told me, “It’s one of two Wii games I own.”

Oh, and for the record, the wife is a fan too – always a plus.

My brother was in the NYC Chinatown arcade this past weekend, and noticed that the Street Fighter IV cabinets were practically empty while players were crowded around the Tekken 6 and BlazBlue cabinets. I’m a little surprised to hear that myself, but if BlazBlue is popular in the arcades, then it obviously has something going for it. This game is basically the sequel to Guilty Gear, with interesting character design, great presentation, memorable rock music, and a deep fighting engine. It’s a great fighting game if you’re willing to take the time learn it.

Before buying the game, I was reading impressions from different buyers of the games and everyone practically loves it. Even casual players were gushing compliments about the game and I found the character designs interesting so I jumped in. I told my brother I picked it up and the first thing he said was, “Wow – you know that it’s a pretty difficult game right?” After playing it for hours now, I have to agree. It’s more difficult than Street Fighter IV. I’m guessing this may be due to us playing Street Fighter games for over a decade now, making Street Fighter IV quite intuitive. But BlazBlue is something else. It’s safe to say that this is NOT a good game for fighting game newbies to pick up, as cool as it may seem. I’d even go so far as to recommend Street Fighter IV for fighting game newbies over this one. BlazBlue is very offensive oriented, with lengthy combos, air juggles, and traps and penalties for blocking too much. It’s almost like a cross between Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs Capcom 2, blending some of the simpleness of the former with the craziness of the latter.

The selection of 12 characters in the game seems meager, but each one plays very uniquely so it’s not like half of them are shoto characters. Sadly, I’d go so far as to say that some of the characters are a bit overpowered, and it’s probably why they’re used so often online. There are four attack buttons: a light, mid, and strong attack and a Drive attack button. The Drive button is what completely differentiates each character, as it functions quite differently depending on the character’s unique trait or weapon. For example, one character uses the Drive button to control his mech that accompanies him, similar to a helper in the Marvel vs Capcom games. Another character uses the D button to control wind, altering the direction that the players move on screen. A third character uses that D button for special attacks that allow him to steal life from the opponent. The list goes on. All in all, very drastic differences in how each character plays based on their Drive ability.

BlazBlue’s online is better and worse than Street Fighter IV’s online. On the better side, it allows for 6 player rooms for Player matches, allowing groups of buddies to “quarter match” it up, something drastically missing in Street Fighter IV. In the ”meh” side, you have a ranking level based on experience tied to both Player Matches and Ranked Matches. So even if you were to just play Player Matches, you would still level up. There’s a “Trueskill ranking” as well, and perhaps that is what is used for Ranked Matches but I’m not sure. I’m not a fan of any sort of “rank progression” based on unranked games, as it defeats the purpose, but it’s not a deal-breaker. What kind of sucks is when you play someone in a ranked game, both player’s stats for both ranked and unranked matches are displayed, which again, annoy me since unranked should just be that: unranked and not counted in any way. And on the bad side, it seems to take quite a long time to find ranked games, especially so if you’re just looking for  a match in the low ranks. It looks like now that the game has been out for over a month, not many low level players are left in the game but that seems to be the case with many hardcore fighting games. I do miss Street Fighter IV’s auto-matchmaking mode where you could play while waiting to get matched up.

While I believe BlazBlue to be a great fighting game, the only issue I have is that the game is perhaps too tough for me. However, my brother is starting to dig it as he’s been devoting time to understanding the nuances of the game and he’s been helping me get better too. I’m lacking in so many fighting game fundamentals that it helps considerably when he is able to go over my character’s moveset and tell me what’s good for poking, what should be my bread and butter attacks, etc. I’ve never been able to figure that stuff out on my own but I’m thankful that he’s around so I’m catching onto the game. If I were just playing this by myself, it would probably already be thrown back onto the shelf by now! So I guess I can conclude my impressions of the game as this: if you’re willing to devote your time to learning this game, you won’t be sorry as it has practically everything a serious fighting game fan could want: interesting characters, top-notch presentation, and a functional and lag-free online mode.

In a previous post, I wrote that I was a bit skeptical about how Halo 3: ODST might turn out. But watching this recently released ViDoc Bungie put out has started getting me more excited about the game.

Basically, I am a sucker for a good science fiction story. Despite the fact that they have been sometimes being convoluted and confusing, I have really enjoyed all the Halo stories so far (even Halo Wars). I think the Halo universe is a sci-fi universe that deserves to be fleshed out through other stories like Star Wars, and this video makes it look like Bungie is trying to do just that. I love the idea of an entire squad with unique and memorable members, who you meet briefly in this video. Unfortunately, I think you’ll be split up from them most of the time, but hopefully they will be characterized well.

Anyway, a bunch of things excited me about the video so I’ll just list them out:

1. The squad I mentioned above

2. The suppressed SMG and pistol. If you can take down enemies without alerting their comrades, even better. It’s also great to see the zoom come back on the pistol.

3. The use of the term F.N.G., which I was introduced to in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

4. What seemed to be a firebomb grenade

5. Amazing looking graphics

6. Nathan Fillion. Yes, I am a geek, but Firefly and Dr. Horrible are both awesome so Fillion in a Halo video game = mega-awesome. Also, Tricia Helfer (from Battlestar Galactica) is voicing a character as well.

Anyway, not that it was ever in doubt, but I’ll almost definitely be picking this at or around launch. I hope Bungie delivers, and this ViDoc has definitely whetted my appetite. They are supposed to be releasing more, so hopefully those are just as good. Only 1.5 months to go!