Leveling Down

The first trailer for Bioshock 2′s multiplayer was released last week, and “Wha?” was the first thing I could mutter after I saw it. Suffice to say, I’m actually not digging it. While the trailer does seem to highlight that the general gameplay mechanics of the original game are included accurately (photo taking, turrets, plasmids, a Big Daddy), it’s far too frenetic with everyone running all over the place and killing each other.

What makes Bioshock such a great game in the first place is the slow pace you could take to explore the game, and then forced to react when you come upon the crazed splicers. Do I want to actually play as a splicer though? Not in particular. I’m afraid Bioshock 2′s multiplayer is just going to consist of people all running around like crazy and shooting each other with no real gameplay depth. What are we, 12 years old? This was the case with Grand Theft Auto 4′s adversarial multiplayer – an addon that was not only unnecessary, but not well implemented either.

Will Bioshock 2′s multiplayer follow in Grand Theft Auto 4′s footsteps? I hope not, but isn’t a trailer supposed to want to make you want to play the game more and not less? Bioshock’s strengths lie in its storytelling and exploration – not its combat engine. Grand Theft Auto 4′s strengths lies in its open-world quests and characters – again not in its combat engine. Yet for some reason or another, someone thinks that these types of games need adversarial multiplayer. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong, and BioShock 2 multiplayer ends up with some innovative adversarial modes or features like in Call of Duty 4 or Shadowrun. I just hope BioShock 2′s single player is still good, as that is all that really matters.

Dragon Quest V makes use of both the DS screens for the world map

On the DS side of my gaming life, Dragon Quest V was the game that finally succeeded in getting me to put Phoenix Wright away. For those unfamiliar with the series, Dragon Quest is a Japanese RPG series that is equal in popularity to Final Fantasy in Japan. Yet on these shores, Dragon Quest never quite got traction for a variety of reasons, so it is relatively unknown to the common gamer. Thanks to the DS re-releases of Dragon Quest IV and V, Americans can now see what they have missed.

Why is Dragon Quest so popular? It’s kind of weird, really. If you look at Final Fantasy, the game has evolved so much over the years – there are new combat systems, different systems for learning skills/abilities, and even games within the game (Blitzball?). Dragon Quest, on the other hand, has stuck to the same basic formula through nine iterations. In fact, it’s stayed so simple that the latest version, Dragon Quest IX, actually came out as a DS exclusive.

So in Dragon Quest you basically get the same type of game you played on the SNES (or even the NES) 15 years ago. Battles are exclusively turn based, your life is in constant danger even against regular enemies, money is an incredibly valuable commodity, and you can never say “no” to anyone’s request (unless you’re supposed to). Yet Dragon Quest V is such a charming game that once you’re into it, you realize that all the above turn into good things for the most part.

The turn-based battles give you time to plot out a strategy and maximize your fighting efficiency, something I personally prefer to the action-based RPGs that are all the rage now. Yes, you die - and die often. When you do you never lose any progress - just 50% of your gold, so you can throw yourself at the same dungeon multiple times until you finally conquer it. But of course, if you die, money becomes even more scarce, but not having money makes you really think about your buying decisions. And finally, yes, the game is on rails for the most part, but the story is enough to make up for that.

There are two notable mechanics that should be noted. First, the story of Dragon Quest V is broken up into “eras”: you start out as a child, then enter your teenage years, and finally finish the game as an adult. During your teen years you have to choose a wife who will be your companion throughout the rest of the game. I actually found the decision pretty difficult on multiple levels; I wanted to choose the best companion in terms of battle skills, but I also wanted to choose the wife with the most amusing dialogue options, AND I wanted to pick the wife that made sense given the story. In some ways it was more difficult than choosing who to marry in real life!

The second mechanic is you need to recruit monsters to your party if you want to survive. It’s actually pretty fun and even though they barely have personalities, I find myself favoring some over others. It’s basically Pokemon before Pokemon existed. The monsters fight like regular playable characters though.

Overall, I think Dragon Quest V is great, but I also loved Dragon Quests I-IV (which I did play as a kid) so I’m a little biased. You get tons of hours of gameplay for your money like any RPG, and even though it follows the same basic formula, there are enough tweaks and changes to make it interesting. We’ll see how things work out with my “wife” though, maybe after twenty years of marriage I will change my tune! I kid…

Even though LargeLobster and Jason both recommended against picking up the 360 version of Marvel vs Capcom 2 when it was originally released, I ended up going for it anyways since I realized there’s a trick for buying a Live Arcade game once for two different people. $15 total for my brother and me to have the game on each of our systems? I’ve bought worse I thought, so I pulled the trigger. After playing it a few rounds with my brother and seeing online, I think I’m already done with it and should have followed LargeLobster’s advice by simply breaking it out on the DC to relive my nostalgia, even with my lack of arcade sticks on the DC.

Here is what transpired over the two hours of my brother and me playing once we bought the game:
1. My brother and I gleefully pick all sorts of teams from the 56 characters and spar, reliving our nostalgia with various characters
2. We begin settling on main teams that we would use for online play – my team being: Omega Red, Cyclops, and Doctor Doom, and his being Amingo, Iceman, and Cable.
3. We continue playing with our main teams against each other for a while until I’m done being flattened by him and he feels confident enough to play unranked online.
4. He joins his first Player match against another player who also mains with Amingo, and gets taken out without the other player even losing a guy.
5. He joins another game with several people in the room, and we witness one guy who picks Magneto, Sentinel and Storm and practically gets a perfect against the other guy with just Magneto.
6. We leave the room, and turn off the game.
7. We don’t speak of Marvel vs Capcom 2 again.

In our little time playing the game, we didn’t notice any of the glitches that Jason mentioned - but of course, we never played it as competitively as Jason did (or does?). What was evident to me was that I was along LargeLobster’s mindset: the game is just too ridiculously crazy. It’s too fast, there’s too much stuff going on, and then the game is over. Maybe in my youth, I would have kept up better, but now I feel like an old geezer trying to not only attack the opponent, but throw out my assist characters, deal with the opponent’s assist characters, air combo, throw supers, etc. My brother fared better due to his innate fighting game skill, but even he seemed to indicate to me that this was one game he didn’t have the patience to get competitive with.

I guess this game’s “re-release” really appeals to two groups of people: those that were competitive players of the game in the first place, and those that just love the characters and want to play for fun. It’s when the two sides meet that things get ugly – and now they can meet thanks to online play. For us, we were opened up to the hardcore side immediately, scaring us away from the game potentially for good. My nostalgia with Marvel vs Capcom 2 is over, brutally destroyed by Magneto. There are people that have played this game for almost a decade!

For Guitar Hero fans, it seems like practically everyone agrees that Guitar Hero 5 has saved the series from its downward course. Reviewers and gamers seem to love how accessible it is - making it the best music game to play at parties since it allows anyone to join or drop out at any time, all songs are unlocked from the start, very little hurdles to actually starting a game (you can join in and play the random song playing right from the title screen), and no more fighting over instruments since all four players can play the same instrument if they want.

Unfortunately, I don’t exactly have guests over as frequently as I once did so Guitar Hero 5 is basically a solo affair for me. Thus, many of these new features that have been touted for why the game is so good just don’t apply in my case so what I have to look forward to most is a new setlist and Avatar support. I like the Avatar support, as it’s amusing to see my Avatar playing, but it makes me wish I could dress him up differently based on clothing I can acquire in-game. And that brings me to a minor negative I have with the game: no more in-game currency – a staple that has been in the Guitar Hero games for as long as I can remember. (Actually, another negative is that I don’t like that Kurt Cobain is an unlockable character, but people will feel differently about that so I’ll just leave it.)

I’m honestly more of a regular Guitar Hero player – not casual where I only play it at parties, but not a hardcore player where I’m full comboing or even playing on Expert. I buy these music games because I’m interested in hearing songs I would have never been exposed to otherwise, and merely content playing through them on Hard difficulty. In a way, these games for me are more about the music than the actual gameplay, which is no longer doing it for me as it used to. I’m a little tired of the plastic guitar now, but my hope is that I come upon some new awesome song like DragonForce’s “Through the Fire and Flames” in Guitar Hero 3.

I guess at the end of the day, Guitar Hero 5 is really more of the same, and I’m no longer enthusiastically playing the games as I was maybe the first or second one. But at this point in the franchise’s history, you’re either burnt out on music games or not. If you’re still going strong, Guitar Hero 5 delivers. It’s hard to really fault it with anything serious except for the fact that the genre is definitely getting old and the limitations on the game’s song importing. When the inevitable Guitar Hero 6 comes out next year, will I buy it? I say no now, but who knows what kind of incentive Activision will throw out to get me to buy it? Music is so ingrained in our world, and maybe Guitar Hero really does have staying power.

I’ll leave it to cmfl3x to weigh in with his hardcore analysis on music games, as he’s a lot more musically talented and can appreciate these types of games more. I’m sure he’ll share with us his thoughts on The Beatles Rock Band game in the near future. Me, I’m just content playing music games with more pop bands that I can recognize (maybe I should pre-order Band Hero since it has Taylor Swift haha).

Yesterday (9/9/09) was not only the debut of Beatles: Rock Band, it was also the 10 year anniversary of the release of the Sega Dreamcast, which debuted back on 9/9/99. Many people wax nostalgic over the Dreamcast, and wish it hadn’t failed as it did, including some of my closest friends. Unfortunately, the Dreamcast’s hey-day was during a time that I took a break from gaming, namely, college. I really only spent time in college playing Frequency and Amplitude so unfortunately I can’t comment on how great the Dreamcast was.

All the buzz I’ve seen about the Dreamcast this past week made me think about which past console I miss the most. After some deliberation, I finally settled on the Super Nintendo. I think I’ve recounted elsewhere that I was so excited to get the console that I blew its power supply (American SNES used in HK), but after that the SNES brought me nothing but happiness. Final Fantasy IV, VI, Chrono Trigger, NHL 94, Super Mario World, Earthbound, Super Metroid, F-Zero, the original Super Mario Kart, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past….what a lineup.

The SNES was the console that took games to another level of depth, coinciding with my hitting adolescence and thus being able to appreciate that depth. At the same time, a lot of those games had that addictive gameplay that would keep my friends and me up until the sun rose racing in Kart, beating the crap out of each other in Street Fighter, and one-timing in NHL 94. One of my eternal regrets is getting rid of my Super Nintendo and not storing it in a box somewhere, which is why I gladly pay Nintendo money on the Virtual Console for the re-releases. Nothing will top all the memories I made with my friends way back when on that box.

So to end this post: Dreamcast lovers, my heart bleeds for you, but Super Nintendo, you’re my numba one!

I’ve said it again and again, but I never really enjoyed the Halo campaigns. But after seeing this recently released Halo 3: ODST Live Action trailer, all I could say was “Holy Shnikes!”

Now I’m totally pumped for the game, so all I gotta say is the marketing team that came up with this ad did their job. This trailer has not only made me forgotten that I’m not a Halo fan, but I would now go see this movie in the theatre if it was made into a full-length feature film.

I think the trailer does a great job of humanizing the ODST, and practically turns the disadvantage of not being able to play as the Master Chief into somewhat of an advantage for this game. Something like this couldn’t have really been done with Master Chief since he was basically a super-hero (and maybe that’s why I never liked him too much – he lacked character). If the protagonists of the actual ODST game echo even some of what I’ve witnessed in this trailer, I’ll be more than satisfied. After all, this ODST trailer tugs at my Band of Brothers’ heartstrings. Day 1…<sob> day 1…

The boss battles could have used more work, but for the most part Shadow Complex was enjoyable from end to end

I know I recently wrote my thoughts on Shadow Complex already, but I still feel like talking about it which says something about how I feel about the game. I figured I’d hit a few more points that espion4ge and I missed our first time, just in case you still might be on the fence:

- There definitely is a lot of gameplay to be had for your 1200 MS points. I finished my first run (100% completion) in about 8 hours without using the blue guidance line for the most part. Then I spent 2 hours on my speed run (under 13% completion achievement) and tried some of the challenge packs. After 10 hours with the game, I’m still seriously considering doing an Insane run, which would be my 3rd run through.

- For a single player game, there is a lot of “competitive multiplayer” interaction. The game tracks how many melee kills you have (amongst other things), and every time you hit a milestone like 100 it will show the score of your friend as well. So I marveled at the fact that a buddy of mine has 2100 melee kills compared to my 500. It’s a small feature that does compel a player to try to “top” others, like a built in leaderboard.

- There are a couple of puzzle elements in the game that are quite a bit of fun to figure out. The coolest thing is that some of these puzzles can be solved in different ways, for a few I solved them one way and found out online the “better” way. So the game lends itself to some subtle but significant gameplay choices.

- The story of the game really is pretty terrible. Now that I finished the game, I’m like…uh…what? Part of me wishes the game was like the original Metroid, aka I have no idea what’s going on but I’m just enjoying the ride. It seems like an afterthought, and should be treated as such when deciding to buy the game.

Anyway, I think that’s all I’ll ever have to say about Shadow Complex. Time for me to go start my Insane run…

Before you decide to buy that next 360 battery pack, or worse, the quick charger kit, allow me to share what I’ve discovered. After buying my first 360, I eventually opted to pick up the quick charger kit and an extra battery pack. That way, I had two battery packs to use for when I’d play a game with a friend or if the one in my main controller ran out I could just swap in the other one. As time went on, these battery packs degraded, taking less and less time to charge and holding their charge for even less. After a couple of years, each of them took about 5 minutes to charge, and after only about 30 minutes of playing, they were spent. A couple years may be adequate for some of you, but this is completely unlike my Nintendo DS Lite’s battery, which has been going strong ever since I bought it back in 2006.

After being disappointed that the battery packs don’t last very long compared to practically every other rechargeable electronic device I own, I was disappointed to discover that the inside of these 360 battery packs are just 2 rechargeable AA batteries. I initially thought that buying the official Microsoft branded rechargeable battery pack would mean buying into some sort of proprietary Microsoft battery device. I was wrong. Why bother buying a battery pack for $12 when you can get a pair of rechargeable batteries for less than half that?

Had I known that the battery packs were just AA batteries in plastic covers, I could have just skipped out on buying the battery packs altogether and stuck with rechargeable batteries. And on top of that, there are certain rechargeable batteries now like the Sanyo Eneloops (which I’m currently using), that have very low discharge rates. You can recharge this type of battery and it can sit for a year only losing 15% of its charge. Compare that with my 360 battery pack, which currently loses all of its charge (whether it’s being used or not) in 30 minutes.

My recommendation is to just skip the Microsoft battery packs altogether and grab a set of Eneloops or any other battery type that has a low discharge rate. Why buy 2 inferior AA batteries wrapped in a plastic shell that is limited to use only with the 360 controller for a high markup when the rechargeable batteries can be used in your remotes, your wireless musical instruments, and many other things? And definitely never buy a used 360 battery pack, since those things could be pretty much depleted by the time you get your hands on them.

Being recently married and a person who is obsessed with music games, I made a conscious decision this year to only buy one of the two major music games (Guitar Hero 5 and Beatles: Rock Band) at full retail price. I even backed off on that when Best Buy announced their BOGO half off promotion last week. I decided to preorder Beatles: Rock Band since I love the Beatles and trust Harmonix over Neversoft, but now that reviews are coming out for GH5 I’m beginning to regret my choice.

All the reviews that are coming out for Guitar Hero 5 make me wish I had the game RIGHT NOW. It seems like the game is now much more user friendly, you can start playing songs from the main menu, drop in/drop out, change difficulty on the fly, and play with any combination of instruments that you want. Anyway, it sounds like a lot of innovation, and I’m a bit sad to be missing out on it. What’s really great is all the songs are unlocked out of the box: no codes or anything.

I guess I’ll have to wait another week for Beatles and hope it is just as good. What I prefer about Guitar Hero is the level of difficulty, which I doubt will be present in the Beatles, so I’ll just have to hope the song list and quality makes up for the difference. I guess this only a temporary lament, since I’ll probably pick up GH5 when there’s a price drop, but I’m big on instant gratification so I’ll have to learn to wait. BAH!

I’ve spent a good amount of time with the retail version of the game this past weekend, and before we get into my impressions, I want to state that I’m not really a comic reader and a gamer foremost. I think it’s safe to say that at this point, any Batman or comic book fan will tell you this game is awesome. But how does it stand on its own as a video game? This is what I want to share.

The glaringly best thing about the game is that you feel like Batman. Being Batman, or any super powerful character with plenty of gadgets – licensed or otherwise, is fun when it’s done correctly and Batman: Arkham Asylum’s gameplay mechanics in this regard shine brightly. The gameplay is broken up into three main parts: beating up unarmed foes, incapacitating armed foes through stealthy means, and using detective skills to look for clues on how to proceed. The combat system is quite intuitive, and really highlight Batman’s martial arts training since he can engage several unarmed thugs at once as he melees and counters his way through the crowd. It works beautifully, and you feel like a total badass when you can clear a room without breaking a sweat.

I am actually having a hard time deciding which aspect of the game I enjoy more: the brawling with the unarmed thugs, or the stealth with the armed thugs. In the stealth mode, Batman encounters several armed thugs at once, and he takes major damage from gunfire so the best plan of attack is “Predator style”. To take out armed thugs, Batman makes use of quietly sneaking up behind enemies to silenty incapacitate them, or he can make use of floor grates or his hookshot to travel where the enemies won’t see him. Perching above enemies allows Batman to hang upside down like a bat and take out any enemy walking by, or he can go with a less stealthy method and simply fly down and knock them out. In any case, the stealth and the combat are the most enjoyable aspects of the game.

The detective skills aspect of the game is “passable”, making the adventure aspect of the game a bit mediocre. At any time, Batman can enter Detective mode, changing the way he views the environment. In this mode, the colors are practically inverted, and items or clues that should be investigated are colored in orange. The clues in general aren’t really much deeper than a breadcrumb trail to the next objective (you won’t be doing any Phoenix Wright style investigations or piecing together clues), so the whole detective aspect of the game doesn’t have any depth. Another issue I have with the Detective mode is that if you want to be aware of clues or any hidden items in the world, you pretty much have to run through the game with the Detective mode on at all times. In my several hours of play so far, I’ve spent the majority of my time in this inverted color mode, and don’t even know what the real graphics of the game world looks like. That’s just poor game design right there – I would have preferred that the colors weren’t all inverted while the important stuff is still highlighted for the player.

The Unreal Engine 3 works very well here, along with the music, sound, and vocals – providing for a very impressive presentation. I imagine that those who are fans of Batman and have desperately wanted to play a good one will giggle with glee when they play through Batman: Arkham Asylum. There’s a ton of background material and references to popular characters in the Batman universe that get unlocked throughout the game. Unfortunately for me, as I’m not really a fan of the Batman universe, they come off as simple “collectathon” stuff that adds more fluff to a game I wish had more depth than its combat system.

All in all, I think this game is enjoyable and a must-buy for Batman fans, but far from a revolutionary game such as BioShock (Game Informer calls Batman: AA this year’s BioShock). Although this is what it’s like to play a Batman game done right, would it still be as highly rated if it wasn’t a Batman game? Most likely not, as hunting for hidden packages (disguised as Riddler’s challenges in the game) are not enough to give the adventuring aspect of the game any real depth. Luckily for us, I think we’re all a little bit biased towards wanting to be Batman, so the game’s faults are easier to forgive.