I finally got to spend several hours with BioShock 2 these last few days, so I’m ready to share my impressions. If you’ve been following Leveling Down for a while, you’re probably aware that my Game of the Year in 2007 was BioShock. That was a crazy good year in gaming, so for it to beat out Halo 3, The Orange Box, Mass Effect and Call of Duty 4 for me that meant it was ridiculously good. The sequel has been handed off to 4 different developers, and there’s even multiplayer now which has learned a thing or two from Modern Warfare. Does the sequel look to carry the quality of the first or even surpass it? Read on for my impressions of BioShock 2 after playing through about a quarter of the campaign and an hour of the multiplayer.

Being a Big Daddy
The biggest gameplay and plot change in the sequel is that you play as a Big Daddy.  From a pure “feel” standpoint, I don’t think that the developers did enough to make you feel like a Big Daddy. Sure, I can use a drill now, but why do I move like a regular person, am able to use plasmids, yet can’t communicate with other Big Daddys? There didn’t seem to be enough development in what it really is like to play as a Big Daddy for the entire game – it’s almost more like you’re wearing a Big Daddy’s weapons and that’s it. And to be fair, that’s ok from a pure gameplay standpoint, since it’s simplified and feels like the first game, but I just think that an opportunity was missed to really give the player a feel for what it’s like to be a Big Daddy if that’s what the goal was.

The one new enjoyable gameplay feature to becoming a Big Daddy (besides using the drill) is that you get to take Little Sisters on “harvest runs”. To be honest, it’s just weird to me that I have to go kill another Big Daddy to take over his Little Sister, as these guys are basically my brethren. In any case, once you do the dirty deed and kill another Big Daddy, you’re able to somehow convince the Little Sister that you’re her new Big Daddy so she leads you to corpses that she wants to draw Adam from. The moment you set her down and allow her to start harvesting Adam, that’s when the Splicers come swarming in like insects out of the woodwork. It’s pretty fun to defend the Little Sister as she harvests Adam, and I thought it was at least one aspect of gameplay that allowed you to experience more of what being a Big Daddy is like. I had no complaints to this, and simply wished to see more aspects of being a Big Daddy like this gameplay example. Good stuff here.

Comparisons to the Original
First off, some of the things I didn’t really like after first playing this game. It’s been a while since I played the original BioShock, so I was surprised that in the sequel, I was limited to only being able to only carry 5 med kits and 5 Eve Hypos at a time. I’m pretty certain the cap can eventually be raised later, but I guess this was a new limitation put in for balance reasons. And sadly, once again, there’s a cap on the amount of money you can carry, so I found myself hitting the $600 limit pretty often in only a few hours of playing the game. In the original BioShock, you traveled between levels via sort of an underwater elevator, so you were able to return to levels if you wanted to. This was removed in the sequel, and you aren’t able to go back to previous levels so if you miss anything in this game, too bad.

One of the things that got changed for the better is the hacking minigame. It’s a lot faster now and works quite well. In the original, you had to move pieces on a grid around to set the pipe up to flow from one area to another, but in this one, there’s simply a needle that moves back and forth and you have to just hit A when it gets into the green (or blue, for a bonus). Hit it in the red and the alarm goes off, and hit it anywhere else and the hacking fails. Simple, straightforward, and effective. There are also “remote” hacking darts now, which allow you to fire into a turret or something far away and hack at a distance. Quite convenient.

When I think about it, there were not that many things I could think of in BioShock 2 that I liked more than the original, but that’s probably not a bad thing since the original was already such an amazing game in my eyes. The fact that the sequel doesn’t really do anything worse from a pure gameplay standpoint means it plays just as enjoyably as the first. If you enjoyed the first, the second preserves the gameplay, but now makes hacking less frustrating. Unfortunately, the game’s soul seems lacking, and that’s most likely because the plot and storyline this time around can’t compare to the first. I don’t feel like I’m in an interesting storyline at all – but rather, just some unnamed Big Daddy running around Rapture. I think I miss Andrew Ryan!

Multiplayer
Surprisingly, BioShock 2’s multiplayer is playable and can be worthwhile entertainment – if you don’t already have Modern Warfare 2 sitting on your shelf. My initial conclusion for BioShock 2’s multiplayer in my little time played is that it’s a solid effort in taking what makes Modern Warfare multiplayer so addicting, but applying it to the BioShock universe. Unfortunately, BioShock 2’s combat engine is not as polished or playable as Modern Warfare 2’s, so it feels far inferior. But if you can get past the weaker engine, there’s definitely a lot of multiplayer gaming to be had.

There’s a leveling system for BioShock 2 multiplayer just like Modern Warfare, and I believe you can rank up to 50. Along the way, you eventually unlock up to 3 loadouts, and each loadout allows you to equip two weapons, two plasmids (active special abilities), and three tonics (passive special abilities). As you level up, more weapons, weapon enhancements, plasmids, and tonics get unlocked, as well as new Challenges that probably also grant exp bonuses. The unlockable items pale in comparison to Modern Warfare 2, but the addicting premise of Modern Warfare’s unlocking and customization is present. It does seem a bit unbalanced though, in that higher level unlocks seem to be a lot stronger than low level ones. Why use the first level’s pistol when I can unlock a machine gun? In any case, I haven’t leveled enough to really see the majority of what gets unlocked, so I’ll hold off on really trying to analyze it for now.

There are a few different game types, but the three primary game modes I played were team deathmatch, domination, and “capture the sister”. Team deathmatch is self explanatory, and domination has both teams trying to capture and hold 3 bases on a map to win. Capture the sister is a unique multiplayer mode for BioShock 2 and it pits two teams taking turns attacking and defending a Little Sister. The objective of the attacking team is to pick up the Little Sister and bring her back to their base while the Defending team is tasked with preventing that from happening. Both sides continue to alternate between Attacking and Defending over several rounds and the Defending side always has one player randomly spawning as a Big Daddy. The player in the Big Daddy suit is very powerful, but his life does not regenerate. In both Team deathmatch and domination, a Big Daddy suit spawns at random during the match, so both sides have an equal opportunity to get to it.

In my hour with the multiplayer so far, it seems quite playable, but again I would wonder why anyone would be playing this instead of Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer when Modern Warfare 2 does pretty much everything BioShock 2 is trying to do much better. Even though there are several varied multiplayer modes, matchmaking, and a leveling/customization system just like Modern Warfare, the actual gameplay itself is just sort of blah. The multiplayer just doesn’t feel amazing to play, but I consider that more of a limitation of the game engine itself than the design. BioShock has always been more of a slower FPS, so when you’re forced to play it at a frenetic pace, it just doesn’t feel solid. But, who knows – I’ll continue to play it more to see if I end up really enjoying it.

Parting Impressions
After playing about a quarter of the campaign and a few levels of the multiplayer, I have to admit that BioShock 2 came together well. The multiplayer is decent, but can’t compare to stuff like Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2, but it is certainly set up such that you can play it for many hours. The campaign is still quite addicting for me, so the magic of the original BioShock’s gameplay seems to have been preserved by the new developers of the sequel. Unfortunately, the only thing that seems lacking in the campaign is the engrossing storyline of the first.

BioShock 2’s storyline so far seems quite forced, as the characters in this game are not as interesting, the plot not as gripping, and even the protagonist is boring compared to the original game’s protagonist, Jack. Maybe that’s what comes out of a sequel that wasn’t exactly necessary from a plot standpoint? While BioShock 2 does not seem like a sequel that is better than the original, I certainly find myself craving to go play it, and can’t wait to jump back into it some more this weekend. That means the game can’t be that bad can it? Hopefully once I complete it, I will be able to finally decide on a score for this game. From my initial impressions, the sequel seems to be off to a great start. Let’s hope it finishes strong!

I downloaded Flower for the PS3 over the weekend, and was pleasantly surprised for a number of reasons. After about 5 minutes, the wife said that Flower was “the most relaxing looking game you’ve ever played.” It’s not as relaxing as it looks, but for the most part, she’s right. It’s nice to have a gaming experience that doesn’t revolve around guns and violence.

Flower is a tough game to explain, but you basically control the wind via SixAxis (tilting) controls. You are pollinating flowers in the field, I guess, I’m not totally sure, but the majority of the gameplay consists of flying over closed flower buds which open as you pass over them. Throughout most of the 6 levels, peaceful music plays and chords or notes are struck with every flower bud you activate. The game looks and sounds beautiful, and the developers should be commended for putting together such an artistic experience for a video game.

Flower serves as a great change of pace, after finishing Uncharted 2 and between Modern Warfare 2 sessions, Flower is a nice game for me to just relax and unwind with. The game CAN be stressful if you want to be a completionist, as there are hidden flowers in each level, but you don’t need to worry about that stuff if you don’t want to. In some ways, it’s contrary to the theme of the game.

The game isn’t just like playing a beautiful screen saver – there are also some mild narrative elements. They were a little too deep for me to totally understand, or I didn’t really feel like using my brain to figure it out, but I appreciate the effort. Flower proves two things: 1) The incredible graphical power of the PS3, and 2) There is room for non-shooters in gaming libraries. At only $10, it’s worth checking out if you own a PS3.

I managed to get my hands on a PS3 (temporarily) and the first thing I did was download the Heavy Rain demo, which isn’t officially out, but can be accessed early. Despite not owning a PS3, Heavy Rain is one of my most anticipated games of the year, so I was thrilled to take the demo for a whirl. My enthusiasm was tempered a little bit after playing through the demo, although I still think the title shows a lot of potential. Hit the jump to find out why.

The best thing about Heavy Rain is that it feels like you are taking part in a movie. The operative motto is “Make choices. Face the Consequences” and I really got a sense of that even in the short demo, which consists of two levels. There are four playable characters, and you will play as each of them at different times during the game. If one character dies, the story goes on, and supposedly there are a lot of different ways the story can end. I like the potential in that idea.

Heavy Rain is essentially a series of quick time events. Walking is methodical and you move the right analog stick in various ways to interact with the environment. For example, a hadoken type motion puts on your technologically advanced sunglasses. It’s neat, although it can get tedious, and one thing I found was that the controls were a bit finicky, especially since I’m not used to controlling a game that way. No big deal, but I noticed that.

The demo also consists of a “fight” between the main character and a guy, which was actually pretty cool. You see the fight from different angles (again, like a movie), and you need to perform various actions to stay in the fight. So it’s like a bunch of quick time events in a row, and if you miss one, you get punched in the face. It actually was pretty fun and tense, since it was a lot about timing. The system definitely has potential.

The game also looks phenomenal – especially the rain effects. It feels like a dark crime drama that you are playing a main role in. The story revolves around the Origami Killer: a serial killer who is targeting children. This game does not look to be a light-hearted affair. Also, I got a sense of the “Make Choices. Face the Consequences” idea from the demo. While interviewing a witness, I actually did not get to exhaust all the dialogue options. The witness cut me off, leaving me with a bunch of unanswered questions. I figure one of the other three characters might fill in the blanks, but I think it’s a cool idea to make the game feel more realistic.

What I was really disappointed in was the voice acting. Coming off of Mass Effect 2, I was expecting strong dialogue from this game, but two voices in the demo in particular sounded stilted and awkward. I couldn’t tell if one of the characters was supposed to have an accent or what. Also, some of the phrasing sounded awkward. After being immersed by the beautiful graphics, setting, and tone that the game had, the bad voice acting really took me out of the experience. Hopefully these voices were the exception and not the rule.

Anyway, I didn’t enjoy the demo as much as I thought I would. Another issue was the controls – it’s a bit tough to walk and it’s tough to tell what aspects of the environment I could interact with, and sometimes I got stuck on things. The quick time events work very well, but the other aspects are a little weird. It might be something that you get used to though. Overall, Heavy Rain still looks like a very promising title, especially storywise. If I manage to hang on to this PS3 by release date, I’ll be sure to check it out!

Has anyone else played the demo? If so, what do you think?

Being a current resident of the DC area, we got hit with a major snowstorm this past weekend (almost 3 feet around these parts). 250,000 homes in the DC area lost power for a greater part of the weekend including my own. Being stuck at home with no power meant no electronics, very little lighting, and no heat. What do people do with no power for extended periods of time? Read? Fortunately, I had a fully charged DS ready to go, and ended up spending several hours playing Puzzle Quest: Galactrix. It’s somewhat of an old game, but with my love for Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, I’m more into puzzle-based RPG games as of late, and so I decided to put several hours into Puzzle Quest: Galactrix.

The game did not get as good reviews as the original Puzzle Quest, and I’m now coming to understand that for myself. For those wondering, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix is a RPG/puzzle game set in a sci-fi universe. The puzzle game revolves around matching 3 or more hexagon blocks of the same color in order to remove them from the board. The RPG elements for the game including leveling up, battling opponents, taking on sidequests and the main quest for rewards, and mining resources in order to create, sell, or buy items and equipment.

The sci-fi aspect of Puzzle Quest: Galactrix is a great fit, and I think it’s done quite well. As a fan of sci-fi games like Galactic Civilizations and Sins of a Solar Empire, the amount of sci-fi elements in place for this game are thoughtfully detailed. You travel around in a starship through various galaxies, able to pick up all sorts of missions that involve deliveries, investigations, and combat. Along the way, you can mine resources on asteroids, trade at colonies that have been set up, and even attack neutral ships to steal their gear. It’s a very well thought out universe, and the sci-fi aspect of the game is brilliant. In fact, I like the setting of Puzzle Quest: Galactrix more than the original Puzzle Quest.

Unfortunately, while the game’s sci-fi setting is remarkably done, the game itself seems to fall flat. The biggest negatives of the game are enough to practically sink it: the sheer number of times you have to hack leapgates and the ridiculous amount of loading & autosaving throughout the game. The game should have been retitled Puzzle Quest: Hacking Leapgates, because that’s basically what you’ll be spending most of the game doing.

So what is hacking a leapgate? Before explaining that, let me describe how traveling works in the game. In Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, there seem to be something like 30-40 different star systems in the entire galaxy. Each star-system has a couple of planets, asteroids, and a couple other random places your ship can visit. In order to get from one star-system to another, you have to hack the leapgate that connects from one star system to another. The right screenshot above is an example of the Krstallus star system, consisting of several different places you can visit like planets, a station, and an asteroid. Notice the other two items on the screenshot – the leapgates. In order to travel from Krystalli to another star system adjacent to it, you will have to hack the leapgate so you can take it to get to the next star system. Fortunately, once you’ve hacked it, you can travel between those two star systems without having to hack it again. But considering there are probably 40 or so different star systems and multiple paths from one star system, there may be over a hundred leapgates.

Hacking leapgates revolves around trying to match a certain number of combos based on color under a certain time limit. On an easy “leapgate”, you may have to match 8 combos within 60 seconds. The wrench in the mix is that the 8 combos have to be matched in the exact color order that is stipulated. So you might have to do: blue, red, blue, white, green, yellow, yellow, purple. If you match another color instead of the order, it won’t throw off your progress, but you eventually have to do all of the colors in the order in order to open the leapgate. As you play more into the game, you are basically required to do even more combos with not much more of a time increase. Having to match 24 colored combos in under 20 minutes is quite stressful, and ridiculously annoying because everything is random. Sometimes it will not ever be possible to get the 24 needed to unlock the leapgate, so you end up having to restart it multiple times in order to proceed.

Matching combos against a countdown clock is probably the weakest aspect of this game, yet it’s pretty much where you’ll spend maybe 50% or more of your time playing. This is not the game I signed up for. There are matching mini-games for harvesting resources on mines, haggling, the best one: fighting opponents. The original Puzzle Quest focused on battle opponents through puzzling, which was what made it so fun. Even the battling against opponents in Puzzle Quest: Galactrix is enjoyable, but the number of encounters are so few – it’s almost like you have to hack 5-10 leapgates in order to fight one opponent. The sheer number of missions and sidequests are also quite staggering, but with a limit of only being able to accept 4 or so at a time makes the mission management very frustrating and inefficient since you have to do so much traveling.

I actually really enjoyed the missions in this game, but who made the stupid decision to not only limit the number of missions you could carry at one time, but the fact that you had to spend most of the game hacking leapgates? If you could carry as many missions as you wanted and hacking leapgates was simply removed from the game, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix would really be a great game. Well, it would still have to deal with the issue of lengthy loading and autosaving after every leapgate, encounter, entering a different star system, etc. It’s almost like half of the game is about hacking leapgates and a quarter of the game is loading and autosaving. The best part of the game – enjoying the sci-fi galaxy, battling enemies, upgrading your ship with parts, etc. all fall into that small 25% of the game that I wish was 100% of the game. Poor Puzzle Quest: Galactrix – you had so much potential. Here’s hoping the next Puzzle Quest actually focuses on what made the original game popular to begin with.

The Battlefield: Bad Company 2 demo was just released last week on the Xbox 360, so I got a chance to play around with it for a couple hours in the last few days. PS3 owners have been lucky as they had access to the beta since last November.

Read on for my likes and dislikes, as well as my initial comparisons to the first Bad Company.

For the record, I’ll say that I enjoy Modern Warfare series more than the Bad Company series. That doesn’t mean that I dislike the Bad Company series nor appreciate its strengths, but if the Bad Company 2 demo is any indication, I don’t think it has enough to really dethrone Modern Warfare 2.

What I noticed most when playing Bad Company 2 is that there doesn’t seem to be many changes since the first one. The Gold Rush style mode from the first game returns where one team tries to blow up several pairs of crates, pushing the defenders further and further back down the map until either the Attackers run out of “respawns” or the Attackers destroy the last crates. Vehicles, such as tanks and helicopters are still prominent. Squads are still in groups of four and you can spawn on any other member in your squad provided he is still alive somewhere. Prone is still not possible. The walls of buildings are still quite destructible. And finally, the overall feel is still carried forth from Bad Company 1 – namely, everything is slower, heavier, and you will find that it is harder to kill opponents in Bad Company 2 than in Modern Warfare 2.

There are a couple differences that I’ve noticed so far between the first Bad Company and this demo. The first is that instead of the original’s 5 different classes you could pick (Assault, Demolition, Recon, Specialist, and Support), the sequel has condensed these classes into 4: Assault, Engineer, Medic, and Recon. The Engineer class seems to be a combination of the Demolition and Specialist class now, as he carries anti-tank weapons and a silenced SMG while the C4 was moved to the Recon class.

The other major difference I noticed between the first Bad Company and this one is that enemy indicators no longer appear. In the original Bad Company, if an opposing player without a silenced weapon fired his gun, he would light up on the map, and if you looked in that general direction, you would see an Orange triangle above him to indicate his position. If I remember correctly, even if you just looked in a general direction and saw opponents, they would light up with the orange indicators for everyone on your team. This has all been removed in Bad Company 2.

At first I thought it was ridiculous that these indicators were all removed – as it was hard enough as it was trying to determine where opponents were. But now that I’ve played it for a while longer, I think it’s a good change. It nerfs the “ninjaness” of the Specialist’s silenced weapon some since no one shows up on the radar now, but it gives a slight boost to the attacking team. In the first Bad Company, the Attackers always had a much harder time blowing up the crates because the Defenders could just camp and any time the Attackers fired, their positions were given away. Now that their positions aren’t given away, the Attackers have a little bit more on their side for destroying the crates.

Some minor differences that I was not a super fan of include the removal of your health bar. Your health doesn’t regenerate in Bad Company 2, but apparently in Bad Company 2 you are not able to know how much health you have remaining. I was looking all over the HUD for my HP, but I couldn’t find it. Either it was placed in a very unintuitive area, or it was just removed altogether. The second thing I did not like was that the speed of the knife attack was reduced considerably. The first Bad Company also had knife strikes, where one knife was a kill and collected you a dog tag. The knife strike in Bad Company 1 was still not at the speed of Modern Warfare’s knife attack, but Bad Company 2 is even slower – perhaps a full second slower. What this means is that the knife is no longer a viable attack when face-to-face with an enemy, since the animation it takes for you to take your knife out and swing it is more than enough time for the opponent to move and dodge the swing. In a way, maybe that’s what the developers wanted – knife attacks should only be stealth kills. I won’t make that argument there, but I’ll admit that it sucks if I’m stuck with a sniper rifle and a tracer gun when encountering an opponent in close quarters. That means I’m dead.

I’ll mention one of the minor things that I did really like though that’s new in Bad Company 2: defib kits. The medic has a defibrillator with unlimited use. If you are near a teammate that has died, you can bring him back to life basically immediately, provided it’s within the first few seconds that he’s died. Having a medic hide behind the attacking front line and immediately bringing them back to life as soon as players fall is awesome.

The Bad Company 2 demo is unmistakably good. But so was the first Bad Company. In fact, I almost feel like the sequel is really not much different from the first game at all, and to me that’s a bad thing. I played the sequel and thought to myself, “Yeah, I’ll get this I guess, but it doesn’t really seem to offer much more than the original Bad Company game.” Still, for those of you that feel like returning to the destructibility and vehicles of the Bad Company universe, the demo shows that it’s going to deliver more of the same. Unfortunately for me, I also feel like my time is not quite over yet with Modern Warfare 2, so Bad Company 2 might have to wait.

The Dante’s Inferno demo went live about a month ago, and I’ve been meaning to write up some impressions on that but haven’t had a chance to. The good thing is, now that I’ve completed Bayonetta, I was able to revisit the Dante’s Inferno demo again to see if any of my feelings on the demo have changed since playing Bayonetta. I started writing about it, but I found myself getting sidetracked from really writing completely about the demo, and instead I’ve divulged into analyzing Eastern versus Western game design. Read on for a little bit of my thoughts on the Dante’s Inferno demo, and a lot of my thoughts on Eastern versus Western game design philosophies for action/adventure games.

When I played through the Dante’s Inferno demo last month, I thought it was a pretty entertaining game and decided right then that I would get the retail version of the game at some point (but not necessarily at launch). In playing through it again this past weekend, I would have loved if the cutscenes were skippable, since I honestly didn’t need to sit through all of the storyline stuff again. To be honest, the storyline is kind of out there, but it works to provide the game with a nice “hellish” backdrop. The protagonist seems to be kind of a loser though compared to Devil May Cry’s Dante or God of War’s Kratos, but with games like this being more about the combat, I guess I can let that slide.

The combat engine in Dante’s Inferno wasn’t as polished as I would like it to be, but it is smooth. Perhaps polished is not the right word but it felt a bit simplistic and not elegant enough. It also gave me a very strong God of War-like feel. I think it’s safe to assume that when anyone talks about Dante’s Inferno, inevitable comparisons to God of War are going to be made. I personally think they look and play similarly, and to me, that’s not a good thing since I don’t think the God of War games are as amazing as the gaming industry makes it out to be.

While everyone showers every God of War game with the utmost praise, I happen to fall into a very small minority group that doesn’t think that the God of War franchise is that good. AAA series? No – more like a B-B+ series for me. And before any flames or whatever get unleashed that I’m a 360 fanboy, I’ll say that if I had the time to play games on both the 360 and PS3, I would get a PS3. There are several titles that I would love to play on the PS3, such as Valkyria Chronicles, Demon’s Souls, Ratchet & Clank, and the upcoming White Knight Chronicles, Yakuza 3 and The Last Guardian. I played through the original God of War on the Playstation 2, and while it wasn’t a bad game, it wasn’t a game that I got super enthusiastic over.

I think it honestly comes down to Eastern vs. Western game design for action/adventure titles. On the Eastern side, we have action adventure games like Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, and Bayonetta. On the Western side, we have God of War, Conan, and now Dante’s Inferno. It may be the old school gamer in me talking, but the Eastern action/adventure games just appeal to be more. They seem to have simpler yet more elegant game mechanics, and are just more intuitive to play. The Western action/adventure titles seem to be more focused on polygons, gore, and nudity yet the Western game worlds seem to be more bland and simple. I was surprised over the amount of nudity in the Dante’s Inferno demo, but hey, now that God of War has made nudity in gaming all the rage, might as well roll with it if you’re going to make a game similar to God of War, right?

Of course, Americans love God of War, but this whole East vs. West game design reminds me of fighting games. Think about the amount of depth and detail in Eastern fighting games versus Western fighting games. On the East side we have games like Street Fighter and Virtua Fighter, whereas on the West we have Mortal Kombat and Primal Rage. All of these franchises are successful, but when I play games like God of War and Dante’s Inferno, I find them to be enjoyable in their own way, but still do not quite hold up to Eastern action/adventure games. The shoe is on the other foot for FPS games and 3rd person shooters, so it’s not like Japanese game design is clearly better.

When I think about why Western fighting games are popular, it’s mostly due to the gore. Think about the amount of game mechanics that are in the Mortal Kombat games – it’s laughable at best. Then I think about my time playing God of War and now the Dante’s Inferno demo: enemies get downed and you are prompted to hit a button to finish them off and perform sort of a fatality. Is this why Americans love these Western action/adventure games? The button prompts to let loose the gore? Then I think about the Japanese action/adventure games, where the emphasis is more on elegance and style of combat rather than sticking your hand down an enemy’s throat to pull his head off. Devil May Cry and Bayonetta were all about gunplay, dodging and combos. Ninja Gaiden was about nimbly moving around the battlefield in order to decapitate as many enemies as possible through chaining.

I think about today how Japanese RPG games are getting poorly reviewed by Western audiences because the gameplay in these JRPGs are not evolving. They are starting to seem almost archaic in comparison to Western RPGs, with their branching dialogue options, morality paths, etc. I’ll be curious to see how Final Fantasy XIII plays when it releases stateside in the coming weeks. But while the Japanese are faulted for not evolving their RPGs, I cannot fault the Japanese for their action/adventure game design philosophies. I like these classic action/adventure game mechanics and believe them to be truly sound. It’s unfortunate these days, but the difference in design philosophies tend to be that the Japanese make better action/adventure, fighting, and platform games, while the Western make better shooters, RPGs, and multiplayer titles. Hopefully both sides learn from each other and we see benefits because of it. In the meantime, I’ll still get Dante’s Inferno, but I know that it’s not going to measure up to Bayonetta. And for Western action/adventure fans, maybe they don’t think Dante’s Inferno will be good enough to compete with God of War III either. We’ll just have to wait and see.

I was traveling a lot last weekend, so I got a chance to spend some time with the new Zelda game for the DS. Part of me is under the halo effect that anything that Nintendo develops and publishes is going to be awesome, but when I heard that the new thing in this Zelda game would be trains and railroad tracks, I was less than enthusiastic. While the game has been getting a large number of positive reviews, after trying it, I’m not one that quite falls into that same crowd. I don’t like where Zelda is going, but perhaps I’m more in the minority with this. Read on for my impressions from the game after playing it a couple of hours.

I loved the original Zelda on the NES and even enjoyed the Adventure of Link. If someone were to ask me which Zelda was my favorite though, I would actually say that A Link to the Past, the SNES release, is my number one. That game was Zelda perfection. Since then it’s been going downhill, although Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess haven’t been bad. We all know the classic formula for Zelda and what makes it work: interesting dungeons, innovative weapons and tools, and the overall feel of exploration and secrets that can be found in the world.

I guess Nintendo has been trying to innovate Zelda more, first with The Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass, and now with Spirit Tracks. I’m not too happy about either of the major innovations that these titles have brought: sea travel and now railroad travel. To this day, I can still go back and play the original Zelda or A Link to the Past and enjoy it like I did when I was a kid. But to go sailing on the ocean for several minutes and playing musical instruments to change the wind patterns so I could make my way to another dungeon or island? This is supposed to be fun for me? I think that maybe I’m just too old – perhaps kids like the whole pirate ship theme with Pirates of the Caribbean being popular and all.

Spirit Tracks again brings forth something that kids love but I just find to be a bother: railroad tracks. Sure, the railroad tracks are less detestable than the sea travel found in the Wind Waker, but even then, it’s all still a hassle for me. I want to explore the world looking for secrets while making my way to the next dungeon, not getting on a train and traveling on some train track trying to avoid pigs in the road and changing tracks to make a turn. After playing this I could only think that perhaps Zelda is just not for me anymore. Sure the dungeons are fun, but for me to spend 30-45 minutes just trying to get through fluff to get there has me longing for the days of the NES and SNES Zeldas.

That’s not to say that the game is bad – the dungeons I did get to play were interesting, and from what I saw, the items were innovative. What’s interesting this time around is that Zelda is in spirit form and travels alongside you, which lends ways to more interesting puzzles since she is able to take over armored spirits and the like. But again, Spirit Tracks brings a musical instrument that you have to play like Wind Waker. And can you believe it? It’s even worse in this game than Wind Waker – you actually have to blow on the mic and touch the right pipes in order to play on your woodwind instrument. However, the combination of being forced to play music according to a beat and terrible controls (why does it keep hitting another note when I’m touching the note I want to play?) lead to a lot of agonizing frustration. Note that even light breathing over a foot away from the screen can set the instrument off.

I don’t know if I’m just growing more impatient with games that make me do all sorts of things in order to get to the enjoyable part of the gameplay, but Zelda: Spirit Tracks could not keep me wanting to play. I know there’s some good old fashioned Zelda dungeon gameplay in there, as I’ve gotten a taste of some already, but when I’m playing games like Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes and Dawn of Discovery where I can instantly be playing the game at maximum enjoyment all the way through, I suddenly have a harder time putting up with extra stuff to get there. That’s not to say that the railroad gameplay will be horrible for everyone. In fact, some of you may welcome the railroad gameplay as an innovative feature, but I just can’t be bothered by it. If you can get over the railroad traveling and come to terms with the music playing, I’m sure there’s a great game underneath. With Zelda, there always has been. Unfortunately, I feel like we have to dig more and more to get to the core Zelda gameplay that we all know and love.

DJ Hero was a game that was released this past holiday season and apparently it “bombed” in sales (based on initial sales estimates that Activision had). At first I didn’t quite understand why, since the reviews had been pretty good for it. Once Amazon put it on sale for $70, I figured I would take the plunge in the name of the blog and let you guys know how it played. Unfortunately, cmfl3x also got it as a present, so I guess I didn’t need to take the plunge after all. He’s played a lot more into it than me, but we’ve agreed that I will give my initial impressions of the game as I am not enjoying it as much as I had hoped. He, being the more music game-inclined player between the two of us, will give a full review sometime afterwards.

One of the biggest problems I had with the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games was the lack of recognizable pop songs that I would enjoy playing to. Sure there were always a handful of songs in each game that I would like, but when about 5 out of 60+ songs are the songs you like to play in a game you buy, it’s not exactly the best deal. DJ Hero had me most interested becaues they had several songs from artists I recognize such as The Jackson 5, Vanilla Ice, MC Hammer, Black Eyed Peas, Rihanna, Jay-Z, etc. The tracklist was a strong selling point for me since I thought that maybe now I’d get a music video game that I would actually enjoy playing an “instrument” to.

While there are plenty of songs that I do recognize and enjoy, it wasn’t after I played through several of them that I felt somewhat ripped off. The game advertises something like 96 different mixes, which had me thinking, “Wow, that’s quite a large number of tracks. More than any Guitar Hero or Rock Band game. What a deal!” Unfortunately what I didn’t know is that while the mixes are “original”, the actual songs being used are repeated. Every mix is basically two different songs mixed together, but several of the more popular songs are mixed into 2-3 different mixes. With many song averaging being in 2 mixes, that really means something like 50 distinct tracks as opposed to 192 (96×2) distinct tracks. Several times I would play a new mix and think, “Didn’t I just hear this song already?” And sure enough, I did – it was just mixed in another song I played earlier. This is not that big of a deal, as I think there’s still plenty of songs to go around, but it’s worth keeping in mind so you don’t get fooled by the advertising of 96 different mixes. Different mixes don’t necessarily mean different songs.

I’ll forgive the lack of tracks that I expected, as the music that is there is still pretty good. Many of the mixes are pretty “bumpin”, since I do find my wife from time to time dancing around as she hears me playing the game so it gets points there. I would conclude from my initial impressions that the music is good, but I wish there was more variety. Still, I’ve enjoyed more tracks in this game than any Guitar Hero or Rock Band game I’ve played so far.

I think the music is the strongest aspect of the game, as the gameplay itself is not quite enjoyable for me. When I first played Guitar Hero, I remembered how awesome it was to play, even if I didn’t enjoy all of the heavy metal and rock tracks. But with DJ Hero, it’s the opposite. I enjoy listening to several of the songs, but I’m finding the actual gameplay to not really be up to par. I’ve been analyzing why this is, and have come up with several issues I have with not only the turntable peripheral, but the amount of stuff you’re expected to do with both of your hands and the tiny window of accuracy you must adhere to in order to score highly.

It’s hard to explain how DJ Hero plays, but I’ll try to summarize it as easily as possible. There’s a turntable with three buttons on it, and there are three colored tracks that come down on the screen. If a circle is on that track, you just have to hit the corresponding button. If there are “scratch” sections on that track, you have to hold the circle down and scratch the turntable by turning it back and forth. This is the primary aspect of the game. It’s somewhat simple, but I had some problems with it from the getgo. First of all, hitting buttons on the turntable that correspond to mixing makes maybe as much sense as playing a plastic guitar for piano parts of a song (which is a disturbing new trend). But what’s more annoying is that holding a button down and scratching throughout the song actually is not so fun (and can be downright painful). After a few songs, I found my arm actually sore and I didn’t really want to continue. I don’t know if it’s because the peripheral is too small for me to rest my hand on it when scratching or simply the combination of holding a button down while trying to get it to scratch is just not fun, but something was not working for me. With this being the heart of the gameplay, I knew that that could be a problem in enjoying the game.

With the core gameplay not being so hot, all of the other stuff just builds on that to make it even less enjoyable. There’s a left-right fader slide that you have to move with your left hand as the tracks sometimes shift left or right quickly. It’s an interesting concept, and the effect is pretty cool but  most of the time the fader rests in the middle. Unfortunately, the nudge that indicates that your fader is in the middle is not so prominent, so you have a hard to figuring out if you’re in the middle or not. I HATED the sequences where you had to keep alternating to the left and right and middle, just because I couldn’t always figure out where I was.

The final two aspects of the game that are making me question my enjoyment of the game are that there’s too much going on on the screen (especially at higher level difficulties) and the room for error is practically none. At least when Guitar Hero got more difficult, it was all about speed – there were still 5 buttons to hit, but everything just came faster. It’s was manageable, and you could go from Easy to Expert with enough practice. In DJ Hero, you have to worry about spinning and hitting buttons with your right hand while moving the slider and adjusting a knob with your left hand. Compared to simply using your right hand to strum for a guitar, and you can see that the learning curve for playing DJ Hero is really steep. On top of that, while you can’t “lose a mix”, the room for error is ridiculous. If you’re scratching a song and you stop scratching a little early, you lose the multiplier. If you are moving the fader and you don’t get it exactly where it needs to be in time, you lose the multiplier. Even on Medium difficulty, I’m getting frustrated where I’m getting sequences where I need to move the fader while still scratching or complete my scratching at the exact same time. What is up with that? Maybe one day I’ll be able to play on Hard, but I’m also feeling like the game’s difficulty just doesn’t make it casual friendly.

In a way, perhaps DJ Hero is a music game for “pro music gamers”, and I’m definitely more of a casual music gamer. It’s not as accessible, and because it’s primarily single player (however, there are a few tracks to play co-op with a guitar), it’s not something you’d want to break out at parties. But the problem with this game for me is that I’m not even that interested in breaking it out by myself either. I think the game’s tracks are pretty good, and I like the innovation that the game adds, but the gameplay itself just isn’t too solid or enjoyable. Maybe it’s time for me to go play Band Hero.

I now understand now why the game bombed. It wasn’t that fun, and it was primarily a single player experience, which meant word of mouth was practically none. With Guitar Hero, someone would play it, love it, invite their friends over, let them play it, they would love it, they would go buy it, and so on. It would just keep spreading like wildfire. Whereas with DJ Hero, I’ve played it, didn’t really enjoy it that much, and now am telling all of you not to buy it. I am probably one of many people that did this, and have contributed to the lack of sales for the game. Needless to say, I will most likely not buy the sequel. In any case, we’ll see what cmfl3x says in his upcoming review of DJ Hero and if his thoughts differ.

When I think about it, the most amount of time I’ve spent playing my DS within the last year was probably the many hours I put into Dawn of Discovery. I can’t remember any other game that I’ve devoted more than a dozen hours to. Well, this looks to change now with this new game I’m playing called Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes. I never heard of it until after it released, and I don’t remember it being advertised, so I sure as heck wasn’t even aware that it was out until it was actually out. But now that I’m playing it whenever I commute on the subway to/from work, I’m very happy. This is the best role-playing/puzzle hybrid game I’ve ever played!

There have really only been two major role-playing & puzzle games released, thanks to the “father” of the genre: Puzzle Quest (and its sequel, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix). There was a lot of praise for Puzzle Quest, but when I finally got around to trying it out, I wasn’t enjoying it too much. While there were RPG elements in the game, it felt more like a Bejeweled game with elementary RPG quests and characters that gave it a RPG-like feel. Unfortunately, I felt that the puzzle element in Bejeweled was boring, and the RPG elements were not making the game that much more enjoyable. Forget about Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, as it has been regarded as inferior to the first game.

I’m not a puzzle gamer. I have friends that love Puyo Puyo, Puzzle Fighter, and Tetris Attack. Sit them in a room and they can go at it for hours. As for me? I have a hard time even setting up a two chain combo in these types of games, so I grow bored of them pretty quickly. Maybe it’s because I get severely creamed by any of these puzzle game fanatics? In any case, I realize now why I love Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes so much: there is not just straight up puzzle game elements or RPG elements in the game, but actual strategy involved that appeals to my RTS and 4X strategy tendencies.

In Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes, it feels almost more like I’m commanding an army rather than matching gems on a board with this game, and maybe that’s why I love it so much. The game is broken up into four or five sections (not sure since I haven’t beaten it yet), and each section lets you take on a hero. The hero levels up from 1 to 10 by taking on random encounters or quest enemies. Beating opponents awards you and your troop types experience (which allow for your main character and the troops to level up) and gold/resources (which allow you to hire special troops).

Unlike in other puzzle games I am aware of, the majority of your encounters in Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes focuses on your main character (who isn’t really on the field, but has a lifebar) versus another opposing character with his/her troops. Imagine the playing field like a battlefield, but if any troops on either side attack and there aren’t any opposing troops in the same column on the defending side, the damage those troops do will lower the health of the main character sitting behind the troops. The troops on the field can always be replenished, but when either main character’s lifebar hits 0, the match is over. This is exactly how Magic the Gathering works, for those of you that have played it. As you can see then, leveling up your main character is useful since it raises his/her maximum life.

The game is almost more tactics than puzzle; the puzzle gives the game the random element but at the end of the day maybe that’s why I enjoy the game so much: the tactics. In Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes, there are regular troops, special troops, and “super special” troops. Regular troops are one character size big (think, one grid on a chess board) and if you connect any 3 of the same color and type, they will form something. If you connect three of them in a row, the three of them will form a wall that can withstand 5 damage from an enemy attack. Form more walls behind that wall to increase the defense of the wall further. Form three of these regular troops in a column, and they turn into an attacking unit, with a countdown in number of turns before they attack. Once the countdown completes, they attack at the beginning of that turn. These regular troop types can be swordsmen, spearmen, archers, etc. and all have different attack properties. Archers attack faster (take only two turns before they attack) while spearmen have a “first strike” bonus that allows them to always do their damage first against an enemy so if it kills them, they take no damage.

The special troops are two character sizes (two connected grids on a chess board). Each of these special troops (there are many), depending on the “race” of the hero, has unique properties when activated. To be activated, they have to be vertically connected from behind by two regular troops that are the same color as the special troop. Once connected, the timer will count down the number of rounds before the unit can attack, and any special attacks will be triggered along the way. Finally, the “super special” troops are the largest troops in the game, standing at four character sizes (a 2×2 grid on a chessboard). They are often super powerful compared to the other units, and need four regular troops of the same color connected behind the unit in a 2×2 box. Once triggered, the super special unit will count down on a lengthy timer before unleashing a powerful attack.

The randomness of what appears on your side is the element that keeps the game a puzzle. Every match you start produces a random assortment of troops on the field, and you must move your troops into such a pattern that you have adequate defense and offense. The puzzle game is turn-based. Each player gets only three turns before having to switch over to the opponent, but chaining combos to form troops creates another turn. So it’s not all a rush of trying to combo as quickly as you can, but rather, thinking smartly (at least, against the AI). You also have a “cap” on the number of units you can have on the field, so when you use them up, your reinforcements go up by that number. Calling for reinforcements uses up one of your three turns, but fills your field with more units if you’re running out.

As you go through the game, your units level up and become stronger offensively and defensively, and you also come across more unit types than you can field at once. Between skirmishes, you can decide which units you want to use to fight with, as well as what item you want to equip for your next battle (you find plenty of items with all sorts of benefits when equipped). For those that are sad to hear that there isn’t a ton of puzzle in this game, there are specific NPCs in the campaign that give you challenges where you have to defeat all enemy troops on the  battlefield with what you have on the field, in a limited number of turns. That forces you to really think about how to go about chaining your attacks in order to kill everyone. And there are even some skirmishes where you are not simply trying to defeat the opponent, but other more difficult things like hitting different switches in a particular order, hitting enemies that take cover behind pillars, or even a case where you’re trying not to hit a moving hostage that is running around the enemy side of the battlefield!

In many cases, this game is a ton of fun and seems like a very lengthy one to play. It’s highly recommended, and one of the best gems I’ve recently played on the DS. My brother and I even tried engaging in some multiplayer, and we discovered that there’s a time limit on your three turns, so if you don’t use them up within that time limit, your turn is just over. But, we also discovered that the units are not completely balanced (the unicorn, anyone?) so we stopped playing it competitively. Sad, as I thought it had the potential to be our next Tetris – the game that he and I played for hours against each other when the original Game Boys came out. Still, outside of the somewhat imbalanced design for multiplayer, it’s one of the best DS games I’ve played in a while. I highly recommend it. Once you start, you will probably have a hard time stopping.

On Monday I recounted my impressions from playing the retail version of Demigod, the first of many DotA successors on the PC. For today, I will share my impressions on League of Legends, another successor that actually ends up not only being quite enjoyable and similar to the DotA-Allstars Warcraft III custom mod, but it’s also free by being supported with microtransactions. Hit the jump for my detailed impressions that compares League of Legends with Demigod and DotA-Allstars.

Unlike Demigod, the team behind League of Legends actually actually worked with creators of DotA-Allstars, and it clearly shows. A lot of the primary aspects of the DotA mod are clearly present in League of Legends, such as a huge number of playable heroes, items and upgrading (if you buy certain items, you can combine them with others to upgrade them into a more superior item), and the overall look and feel remains similar to DotA. In fact, while League of Legends supports its own graphics engine, I can’t help but feel that it borrows heavily from Warcraft III’s cartoony polygon engine. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as it makes the game feel like the original mod, and not something else entirely.

New to League of Legends that differentiates itself from DotA & Demigod is the concept of a Summoner account, allowing for a great deal of persistence in the game. While every game you play is isolated from the next (with the hero you picking starting at level 1 at the start of the match), the Summoner account is THE profile you must create to log into the game. This Summoner account tracks your overall win/loss/disconnect record, as well as a whole host of other features. In a sense, this is a major upgrade over the original DotA and even Demigod – because now there’s heavy stat-tracking for your play in League of Legends.

Your Summoner account can level up with experience points you gain from winning and losing matches (obviously winning gives you more). Each level unlocks an attribute point that allows you to spec in one of three skill trees that all players have access to. The benefits are not super powerful enough that a level 20 Summoner player will trounce a level 1 Summoner player, but there’s definitely some advantage to be had for leveling up your Summoner since you can get a higher critical damage %, increased health, etc. It seems imbalanced, but when you think about it, each game is isolated anyway and within each game the players’ heroes start at Level 1. The actual in-game heroes’ levels far outweigh balance versus the Summoner level skill tree. If a Level 1 Summoner player took on a Level 20 Summoner player but in-game the Level 1 Summoner had a Level 3 Hero against the Level 20 Summoner’s Level 1 hero, the Level 1 Summoner’s Level 3 Hero should have a major advantage.

When you start a match, the game goes into the “pre-match” mode where it matches two teams of players together, and within those 90 seconds of the pre-match, each player first decides which hero he wants to use for the match. After that, the player can decide on using any 2 Summoner-level abilities that are universal from about 7-8 different skills. These abilities cost no mana in-game, but have a very lengthy cooldown. Some Summoner-level abilities include healing yourself and any allied units in the area, warping to a friendly unit/structure, and resurrecting quicker after you get killed. You can also choose runes, and other further customizations for a particular match but I hadn’t leveled up my Summoner enough to get access to them.

League of Legends is also 100% free. How is this possible? Microtransactions. The whole Microtransactions system is actually implemented very well, and seems to heavily favor not charging players rather than charging them (unlike my initial impressions with Battlefield Heroes). Your Summoner profile has two “currency” types – one that is based off of actual money and one that increments when you play/win matches. From what I saw, the primary area that you would be spending your Summoner currency on is the ability to unlock heroes for good. If you play without spending any currency, it looks like League of Legends makes 10 different heroes free to play for a particular week, but then rotates in a different set the following week. So if you’re a free player, you’ll always have to use a different one each week unless you unlock one that you really like, allowing you to always use that hero. I think you can also buy alternate costumes for heroes as well, but I’m not sure whether they can only be bought with actual money.

So how does it play? I really liked it. It truly preserves the look and feel of DotA-Allstars while introducing all sorts of new heroes, persistence with stat tracking and higher-level ability specs. The gameplay itself doesn’t depart much from the original DotA-Allstars, which is a good thing for those of us that were fans of the original mod. Hero Skills in League of Legends are a lot less confusing than in Demigod since each hero really only has three skills and one ultimate to level up.  Games were easy to find, taking about 1 minute to match me up with 9 other players when I played some matches. One gripe I had with the game is that when a player drops. If a player just disconnects, that’s it – your team is one player down and when it becomes a 4 vs. 5, you’re in big trouble. At least in Demigod, the AI took over. Also, there’s only one map right now, but I’m sure more are on the way. Hey, how much can you really complain about for a free game? Jump in and if you’re up for playing, maybe we can run a few together!