I wasn’t too impressed with Grand Theft Auto IV and didn’t really understand all the wild praises it was getting (including on this site!). When Red Dead Redemption came out earlier this year, I immediately said “pass. Not interested in Grand Theft Seabiscuit”. RDR received even MORE praise than GTA IV, and NatureB4E insisted that I give the game a try, so I decided to take it for a ride. Overrated like GTA IV, or a true gem? Hit the jump to find out.

A Protagonist Worth Rooting For
One of my big problems with GTA IV was Niko Bellic. At first, I felt like he was likable and a good guy thrust into a bad situation. But as the game continued, Rockstar kind of abandoned that presence and Niko just turned into a murdering psychopath. The character just rang hollow.

Red Dead Redemption doesn’t have that problem. John Marston’s back story is revealed slowly, but from the beginning, you can tell what type of man he is, and more importantly, what is the “right” way to play him. Video games are about role playing, and Red Dead Redemption encourages you to play Marston a certain way. Sure, you can kill everyone who looks at you funny on the street like you did in GTA, but I never felt right doing that, not because I was morally against it, but because it didn’t seem like something Marston would do. It’s amazing how subtly Rockstar pushes you in that direction. That being said, there are still some inconsistencies, as Marston seems hell bent on accomplishing his goals no matter the consequences. For the most part, though, that remains consistent with the story and actually fits his character arc.

More importantly, Marsten is a character I find myself rooting for. I wanted things to end well (though I wasn’t sure if they would), and I really wanted to see how things turned out. Like any Rockstar sandbox game, you can get involved with random people’s stories and lives in the world, but you can opt in or out as much as you want. For me, I just focused on the main storyline – that’s where I’ve found the most fun. But if I saw someone getting beat up needlessly in the game world – I took care of that too. There’s unsurprisingly a lot of crime in the wild, wild west.

A New Setting Worth Seeing
Supposedly, old school westerns have no appeal for gamers. I guess Rockstar didn’t get the memo. Liberty City was impressive, but the distant, lonely feeling that you get from the western locale they have created in Red Dead is really something else. Towns are few and far between and outlaws roam the wilds. It almost feels a little bit like Borderlands. Unlike Borderlands, the people around have personalities and so does the world itself. It’s really fun to explore it, and you never know what you might come upon as you are riding your horse.

The gameplay is pretty much the same as GTA: you activate missions for different people and that moves the story along. Depending on where you are in the story, only certain missions are available. The game feels more forgiving than GTA: there are (invisible) checkpoints throughout the missions so if you die you don’t get set back too much. Also, the game isn’t super difficult, but it’s still hard enough to be fun, which helps things out a lot. Aiming still isn’t as good as other third person shooters, but it is pretty good and a major improvement from GTA.

One thing I’d complain about is that I was riding my horse too much. Usually after a mission starts you ride a horse with a companion and have a conversation. That conversation fleshes out the characters and also helps to set up the story – but it feels a little bit lazy. For a game with such a great story, I wish they had come up with a deeper way to convey some of that information. I also came upon some sections that were kind of broken – once I was driving a stagecoach while shooting bad guys, fell in a ditch, and couldn’t get out. I had to kill myself to restart at a checkpoint, which really jarred me out of the game world. It’s nitpicking, but it still bothered me enough to dock the final score of the game.

A Game Worth Playing
I must say, I was impressed with Red Dead Redemption. After GTA, I wasn’t sure Rockstar could really live up to the hype. But in Red Dead, they’ve created a subtle, deeper, and less sensational game that is a lot of fun to play. It’s also a better game in my opinion. I definitely recommend checking it out – it is deserving of its game of the year (2010) accolades, even though it isn’t my personal game of the year.

I should mention, though, that I played this game mostly for its story. The gameplay was good, but not great, and since I’m achievaholic free these days, I skipped almost all of the side stuff. Burning through the story still took a good 12-15 hours so I’m sure you could spend 30+ in the game if you wanted to. Rockstar should be commended for how they handled the story, as Marston’s backstory is slowly revealed, you get a sense of how things are going to end, but they still manage to surprise you as well. It’s strong work.

Final Grade: B+

The fall TV season is upon us, which leads to this equation: New TV Shows + Old TV Shows + Starcraft II + Halo: Reach + Fallout: New Vegas in 3 weeks = Mrs. cmfl3x is not a happy camper. One day, when I figure out how to maintain a better balance, I will write an article about that. Today is not that day.

Instead, what with all the rectangular screens I’m staring at these days, I started wondering what TV shows would work well as a video game. Really, there is only ONE game that I’d really want to see, but I added a few more for good measure. Check it out!

It’d be fun to play as any of these characters, except maybe the mom – though she can wield a shotgun too!

Burn Notice
TV Genre: Spy/Action
Video Game Genre: Sandbox

Grand Theft Auto has long been lauded for its open world play, and deservedly so. But instead of doing the morally questionably things, what if you were working for good? Solving conspiracies, helping out people in need, stuff like that. Well that’s Burn Notice.

If you don’t know the show, it follows Michael Westen, a wrongfully burned spy who throughout the various seasons goes about trying to clear his name – basically he wants to take down whoever conspired to kick him out of the CIA. In the meantime, he helps out various needy people in CIA – people who get caught up with the wrong crowd, kidnappings, people who get blackmailed, and other troubled souls. Every season, there is one overarching mission/mystery, while Michael and his team (Fiona his on again/off again girlfriend and Sam, an old buddy who drinks too much) take on individual missions to make money/save Miami’s troubled people from the dark underworld.

What I’d imagine is that you could take various missions around the city of Miami, helping people out in different ways, acquiring money and weapons as you try to uncover whatever conspiracies there are. You could go off the plot from the show or you could make up a new one. Regardless, this game NEEDS to happen. It’s the entire reason I wrote this post.

Lost
TV Genre: Drama/Sci Fi
Video Game Genre: Action Adventure/Exploration

No brainer. Yes, they made Lost: Via Domus, but it sucked. The mythology of Lost is now complete, and a lot of adventure could be had in trying to uncover the secrets of the Island. You could solve puzzles, fight off the Others  – everything a good action adventure game would need. If Nathan Drake and Lara Croft can run around in the jungle solving mysteries, can’t we do it with the Lost characters?

I could imagine something like this: take a certain season of Lost and choose the mysteries/puzzles that are/were solved in that season. Throughout the game you play as different characters, and the different characters can have different strengths – Locke can be used to convince people to do things (dialogue puzzles), Sawyer can be used for action, Jack can solve puzzles or something, and Kate can stand around and be annoying. It all can add up to one fun game!

Cylon Raiders could be your ENEMIES

Battlestar Galactica
TV Genre: Sci Fi
Video Game Genre: RTS or Flight Sim?

Battlestar Galactica also has a XBLA game, but that sucks too. I could easily see a Wing Commander type game being made from the Battlestar franchise. A RTS could be possible as well, but you only would have two races and would have to make up some units. Either way, I’d totally buy a good game based on Battlestar Galactica.

For the flight sim, you’d just need to make up a certain series of missions that Apollo, Starbuck, Hotdog, and the gang need to partake in. You can fly Raptors, Vipers, shuttles, or even a Cylon Raider (Starbuck did it! Best episode EVER.) It’s totally like Wing Commander. In between missions you can do the Starcraft thing (which basically was ripped from Wing Commander) – you can wander the ship, make relationships with the crew, get your frak on, etc.

RTS – same thing, except instead of doing different flight missions, you could just “fight the war” against the Cylons. Or play as Cylons. The possibilities are endless!

Leverage
TV Genre: Caper
Video Game Genre: Hybrid

If you’re not watching Leverage, do yourself a favor and check it out. It’s basically a team of 5 Robin Hoods, each with a different skillset, that works together to help out people who have been wrongfully treated. If it sounds like Burn Notice, it’s because it’s similar – but Burn Notice is more spylike/CIA stuff, Leverage is more Italian Job/caper stuff.

The five main characters are hilarious and have great chemistry, and each of their skillsets could be used for gameplay. There’s the “hitter” – his sections of gameplay could be standard beat-em-up. The “hacker” can be put in various hacking/tense situations, the “thief” obviously can be involved in stealth sections, and the “grifter” could be used in Mass Effect dialogue tree type stuff. The final member of the team, the “brains,” could be given different decisions to choose in a given mission that affects the outcome. Man, I want to play this game!

Hawaii 5-0
TV Genre: Cop Drama/Action
Video Game Genre: Shooter

I just put this on here because I was watching it while typing up my post. But basically, you could take Hawaii 5-0 or any cop drama and turn it into a video game. Why Hawaii 5-0? Because I think the team of four has shot like 20 people in the first two episodes already. The show looks as ridiculous as a video game already – might as well turn it into one.

Final Thoughts
I’m sad as I write this, because even though I think any of these ideas COULD be great video games, it will never happen. Even if one of these shows turns into a video game, odds are the game won’t be good. Why? It costs a lot of money to license a product like Lost, and that’s money that can’t go into development. Also, to make some of these games a success (outside of Burn Notice), you might need to take risks, and you HAVE to make a game that stands on its own apart from the fame of the TV show. I wish there were developers that could do that, and there probably are – but they probably wouldn’t do it for the price they would get.

That being said, who knows. One can hope. I think a game that took some of these ideas could really push the video game industry in the right direction. Imagine if Inception came out first as a video game before it was a movie. Those kinds of new ideas are needed to keep the industry fresh. Maybe it’ll happen! If not, at least I’ll have DVDs or new episodes to watch. Note to readers: check out all of these shows! (Actually, I can’t vouch for Hawaii 5-0 yet since it’s only been two episodes, but hey, 20 people got shot in two episodes, how can you go wrong?)

Last Friday I posted about how I felt that EA’s Project $10 initiative is working, and I’m a supporter of it. Hey, I’m all for supporting developers and publishers to make money off their own products and if it came down to it, I wouldn’t mind if the used market disappeared altogether. EA has been coming back into the spotlight in a positive way with gamers these days, while Activision has gone the other way. But there’s one thing that EA is now more guilty of than others at this point that I am annoyed with: DLC for single player games. Read on for my thoughts why.

The Premise
Game publishers have definitely hopped on board the DLC bandwagon these days, as everyone is trying to make a quick buck. The Modern Warfare 2 map pack sold over 2.5 million in its first week, bringing in nearly $40 million for Microsoft and Activision. While I don’t necessarily partake in buying multiplayer DLC, I don’t outright condone it as I do think that new maps can extend the multiplayer enjoyment for games.

What I don’t like is DLC for single player content. A lot of games are doing this nowadays, and it annoys me for several different reasons. Ever read a book or watch a movie and then be told later that there was another chapter that is a part of the book or another 10 minute scene that takes place after the movie? To me, the single player experience for a game is very similar to a book or a film – it’s creative and artistic, and presented in a finite way for it to be enjoyed. Nowadays, game publishers are sticking in some random dungeon here, a hidden island there, or even “missing levels”. When I complete the single player for a game, I like for it to stay completed. Freaking finish the game in the first place or don’t release the “extra DLC” at all! Unfortunately, the game industry is not quite abiding to my wishes. Let’s look at the list of games in EA’s recent history that are guilty of what I am starting to hate.

Dante’s Inferno
I just started playing Dante’s Inferno last night, but I read that one DLC pack has already been released containing another mission and a second DLC pack is on the way. In fact, both of these DLC packs were announced before the game was even released. Come on – couldn’t the two DLC packs for this single player game have simply been released from the get go? Is DLC really the way to prevent people from selling the game? Maybe EA should have considered free DLC – then people would be more inclined to hold onto their games and I wouldn’t have this article to blog about.

Mass Effect 2 (and even the first game)
All was fine and dandy with Mass Effect 2′s DLC until the Kasumi DLC was just released for $7 (although, I’m still annoyed with even the “free missions” that were added to a supposedly complete campaign). Come on – couldn’t this character have already been included in the game to begin with? And people that already beat the game – are they really going to want to go and buy this pack just to pick up another character? They’ve already beaten the game. What’s the point? $7 buys you the ability to play with a new character but you already beat the game. As much as I dislike this Kasumi DLC, it would have actually been better if it was released at the game’s launch, so people could use Kasumi in their initial playthrough of the game. Oh and let’s not forget Mass Effect 1′s pair of silly and stupid DLC.

Army of Two: The 40th Day
The first Army of Two game had a very short campaign, and I’m pretty sure that the second one did as well. So it irks me a great deal to hear about a $10 DLC pack for this recent sequel that contains two new missions. What the heck? Sounds like the developers couldn’t finish the game on time, so they decided to just charge us for their poor planning afterward. Thanks guys. As if your first game wasn’t short enough in the first place.

Dragon Age: Origins
I played through the original Dragon Age: Origins game earlier this year and had a great time with it. It was a lengthy game, but there’s already been enough DLC (two packs and an expansion) that when combined, equal about the cost of the game itself. The DLC packs and the expansion have all gotten bad reviews, and rightly so. For a game that’s epic and already 50 hours long, to be charged $5-$7 for another mini dungeon or $40 for an 20 hour epilogue that doesn’t even really continue the main campaign’s storyline is just a slap in the face to fans. Why not just make the sequel instead of all these minor extensions to an already great and complete game?

What About Non-EA Games?
It’s easy to hate on recent EA games doing this, but to be fair, EA is not the only company partaking in selling DLC for single player games. However, major titles that come to my mind that do have single player DLC are actually a lot more thorough and not necessarily as bad. I’ve yet to play all of the DLC for Fallout 3, but one of them raises your character’s level cap from 20 to 30, which is actually very significant and I can see it contributing a lot to the single player game. Bethesda Softworks’ other 360 game, Oblivion, had all sorts of extra DLC that was totally not worth it – except for Shivering Isles. That DLC was a lengthy and engrossing adventure, and I did enjoy it. Then there’s also games like Grand Theft Auto IV and Resident Evil 5 that have their own DLC, but these DLC packs are completely different campaigns than the main one and I can’t quite hate on those since they were truly developed afterward and did something different. Assassin’s Creed II got a bit of hate with its DLC missions, as they were missing from the original release and Ubisoft was up-front admitting that they could not fit them in before the game shipped. While that was potentially more of a good reason to hate the DLC, I found it refreshing that they were honest and I also agreed with their statement that Assassin’s Creed II already had tremendous value due to its lengthy campaign so I was more willing to forgive them for putting it out there. And finally, I’ve saved the best for last: Final Fantasy XIII. When asked if there would be any Final Fantasy XIII DLC, the producer and director of the game claimed that the final product was already 100% complete. Thank you guys – it’s good to know that some game developers out there still believe in shipping a complete single player product these days.

The Messy Line Between EA’s Two Initiatives
So while we are now all aware of EA’s Project $10 strategy, not all of us were aware of EA’s second “more secretive” initiative: Project DLC Everything. I can see the reasoning behind going with both initiatives: EA of course wants to make more money (or in a sense, reduce the amount of earnable money lost through used sales). In order to do this, it’s in EA’s best interest to have gamers hold onto the games they bought new. Project $10 is a step in the right direction to getting gamers to buying EA games new, but Project DLC Everything is not the right way to keep gamers from selling their single player games. Unlike other major publishers’ DLC, EA seems to be doing whatever they can to nickle and dime us with short DLC that could have easily been included in the game’s release. Is someone really not going to sell Mass Effect 2 now because a $7 DLC pack with an extra character gets released a month after the game comes out? Come on. Compare EA’s DLC to something like GTA4′s The Lost and the Damned and we can see the right way to do DLC and the wrong way. EA should have instead made the second initiative: Project Free DLC. That would have kept more of us inclined to hold onto our games. Of course, I personally would prefer for single player games to just be 100% complete from the get-go, but I can’t fault a game company for wanting to make more money – unless it disrespects its supporters like EA has been.

I’m still in the middle of BioShock 2, so I’m going to kick this week’s gaming entries off with a gaming topic that I’ve been wrestling with for a while now: “open-world” sandbox gameplay design. It seems like it’s getting more and more popular these days, and while I may be in the minority for this, I don’t think I am a fan. Grand Theft Auto III made sandbox gameplay popular, and ever since then, we’ve seen several games in the last few years implement this “feature’ from Burnout to Halo. The addition of basically being forced to travel everywhere to actually start a mission certainly makes a game longer, but does it make a game more enjoyable?

Sandbox/open-world gameplay design is really tough to naildown, as there are many games out there that have some implementation of it while not necessarily relying on it. I think back to the old school NES days, and games like Kung-Fu, Super Mario Bros. 1-4, etc. all were pretty much focused on the missions. While the later Super Mario Bros. games started drifting towards more traveling between missions (like Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World), it wasn’t until Super Mario 64 that you were forced to go open doors to start a level on a huge castle map. And it’s that jump to all this “downtime” between the missions is what is starting to annoy me. Here are some examples of recent games that tackle (or deal with) open-world gameplay.

Burnout Revenge vs Burnout Paradise
Burnout Paradise is probably one of the strongest examples of a sandbox style game. Prior to Burnout Paradise, the previous Burnout games, including my favorite, Burnout Revenge, were all level based and selectable from a mission menu. You would choose which race/challenge you wanted to compete in, and the race would start. If you lost, you could simply start the race/challenge again from the menu.

When Burnout Paradise was first released, the game was an open world so you actually had to drive everywhere in order to find a mission to start it. Is there really a lot of fun in having to drive several minutes to find a mission to take on? What if you don’t want to do that particular mission? You have to drive across town in order to do the mission you want to do? And on top of that, when the game was first released, if you lost a mission, that was it. You would end up somewhere else on the map (wherever you lost in that mission), and you would have to drive all the way back to the mission start location to start the mission again. Thankfully, that has since been patched so quick restarts are now in the game (after a lot of people complained), but my annoyance remains that I have to physically waste time driving everywhere I want to actually start a mission.

I do realize that it’s fun to play through an open world sandbox with friends online, but it’s not something that really provides a tangible benefit from gameplay. It’s like I’ve now being forced to commute anywhere I want to start a mission when it was fine before that.

Halo 3: ODST
Halo 3: ODST was the first Halo to implement a sandbox-style world, forcing you to travel through the streets of New Mombasa in order to find equipment from your squad that would trigger their flashback missions. While I still prefer no sandbox to sandbox style game design, I thought it worked quite well for ODST and I probably enjoyed the Halo 3: ODST campaign more than any other Halo’s campaign. I’m still trying to determine why I wasn’t as bothered by the Halo 3: ODST sandbox, and I think it’s most likely because the primary aspect of Halo 3: ODST, the combat, was still present during the sandbox mode. As you moved from one area to another, you still had to take on enemies, so it almost didn’t feel like a sandbox at all. In my previous example with Burnout Paradise, the driving from one mission to another was NOT the primary aspect of Burnout Paradise. Driving is not the same as racing.

Grand Theft Auto IV (& its expansions)
Having recently beaten The Lost and the Damned expansion, I was annoyed that I had to keep traveling across the map in order to get to a new mission. The problem with the Grand Theft Auto games is that if the sandbox was taken away and the game was just a series of missions, I think the game would probably fall on its face and not get the high marks it usually gets. If you could take away the driving between missions in Burnout Paradise, and even all of that hub traveling in Halo 3: ODST, both of those games would still be quite enjoyable to play, and would thus be played like a Call of Duty campaign: mission after mission after mission. And that’s honestly the gameplay design choice I would always prefer.

Grand Theft Auto IV is tough because the sandbox + mission structure are so intertwined in that both of the parts together are what make the game enjoyable. If the game was just one or the other, neither is strong enough to be entirely fun, but I can see why the kids like it. The combat system in GTA IV is laughably poor compared to any 3rd person shooter these days, and the only reason anyone would enjoy the sandbox gameplay of having to drive anywhere you need to go is because you enjoy stealing vehicles and killing civilians. It’s just not my thing. To be fair though, GTA IV implemented taxis, allowing you to fast-travel to anywhere you want to go, which was a MAJOR reason I was able to beat this game but none of the previous GTA games on the PS2. Thank you for that. And The Lost and the Damned allow you to call your friends to bring you weapons or motorcycles, which also eliminate needless commuting and errands you would be forced to run otherwise in order to actually play the game.

Assassin’s Creed 1 & 2
The Assassin’s Creed games are like historical Grand Theft Auto games, in that they are open world and you move across town in order to pick up new missions. Of course, back then you didn’t have cars so you would have to run across rooftops and use a horse to travel from one town to another. Assassin’s Creed 1 was pretty bad when it came to being forced to “commute” through its open world, but Assassin’s Creed II fixed a lot of problems that were inherent in the first game to make it much easier to play. In the sequel, you no longer had to ride a horse for like 15 minutes to get from one town to another – instead you just warped to it. Assassin’s Creed II also had fast-travel spots in various towns, allowing you to quickly move from one point to another on a map. This didn’t eliminate all “time-wasting commuting” between missions and such, but it made the game a lot less annoying. It’s a step in the right direction, and one of the reasons why I consider it to be the best sequel of 2009.

The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion & Fallout 3
Both of these games have huge sandbox style worlds from Bethesda Softworks. You could honestly travel on foot throughout both games for hours and still feel lost. I actually think that Oblivion and Fallout 3 handle their sandbox gameplay design the best. In both games, you have to physically commute to any new location in the world, but once you have gotten there, you can always fast-travel back to that spot. This allows for exploration, but doesn’t force you to waste unnecessary time commuting back to the spot. No complaints here, and if future sandbox games all incorporated fast-travel like this, maybe sandbox games are evolving.

Final Fantasy X & Final Fantasy XIII
RPGs may have been the first real games that forced this “open-world” sandbox into gaming as you had to navigate across an overworld to go from a town to a dungeon and such with random encounters along the way. But like Halo, RPG games primarily focus on combat so the random encounters in the overworld are not so bad. The Final Fantasy games are going a little bit crazier in this aspect and really evolving. When Final Fantasy X released on the PS2, it was the first Final Fantasy game with no overworld map. People were gasping that you just got in your airship, and selected the zone you wanted to travel to you and you would just start there. It may have been jarring at first, but it turned out to be awesome. The overworld was commuting that I don’t miss at all.

Final Fantasy XIII is going even one step further – apparently there are no towns in this game. I don’t know how it works since I haven’t read too much about it, but my impression is that a “town” will simply be a location you can go to, and then you will have a menu of some sort that you can navigate and pick “Armor shop”, “weapon shop”, “Item shop”, etc. all from a menu as opposed to running around town into various buildings looking for the shops. If I’m now being forced to travel through a menu to get what I need to do instead of running around a huge town for hours, that works for me.

In Conclusion
When done right, sandbox style games can work, as I’ve mentioned several games that have ways that don’t force you to commute – at least all the time. But what I’m hoping for is that the future’s games don’t rely on the sandbox gameplay design to artificially lengthen their games. If Crackdown 2 is being heralded as a 30 hour game but 15 of those hours are actually traveling to get to each mission or boss, then is it really a 30 hour game?

If I were to give my opinion to game designers, it would be to focus on the actual gameplay itself. Make everything as simple as you can such that we gamers can actually enjoy the game. Games like Burnout Revenge, Gears of War, and Modern Warfare all have missions that are forced one right after another or are selected from a menu. If you want to make players travel across a sandbox to get to these missions, please show some consideration as to whether or not the forced commuting really adds value. Sandbox gameplay is not necessarily a step forward in gameplay design!

After completing Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and the Damned, I had some gaming time before Bioshock 2 would be delivered to my door. I didn’t want to get into anything too lengthy, so I figured diving right into The Ballad of Gay Tony would be an optimal choice since it would allow me to close the book completely on the GTAIV universe and move on. Unfortunately, after playing the first couple of missions, I realized that I needed a break from the GTAIV world. I needed a game with just better gameplay in general.

As I recently lay in bed one morning, I came to the realization that I had to go back to Bayonetta since it was the game that defined what good gameplay is in this generation. Those of you that have read my review of Bayonetta know how much I enjoyed the game. It’s most likely the best action-adventure game I may have ever played within the last several years. So when I was growing tired of the lack of enjoyable gameplay in the GTAIV universe, who did I come crawling back to so that I could remember how much fun playing games could be? Bayonetta of course. And Bayonetta greeted me with open arms.

Before “retiring” Bayonetta to my collection, I had beaten the game three times – once on Normal, Hard, and Infinite Climax. Unfortunately, with Infinite Climax, I took the easy way out and beat the game using an unlockable item that trivialized the hardest difficulty in the game. Using this item negated any uploading of level scores for Infinite Climax onto the Leaderboards, but when I originally beat it, I figured it was probably too tough to beat without it so I didn’t care too much.

I had two goals in mind when I popped Bayonetta back into my 360: to update my Normal Leaderboard scores and to beat the game legitimately on Infinite Climax difficulty. My Leaderboard scores on Normal difficulty were laughably noobish since it was my first playthrough of the game. On my Hard playthrough my total completion time was half the time that my Normal playthrough was, so I knew I had to do a better job with the Normal scores. I also figured playing through Normal would be a good way for me to reacquaint myself with the game’s wonderful combat engine in order to tackle the second (and much more difficult) goal: beating it on Infinite Climax legitimately.

I tore through Normal like lightning, beating the game in 2 and a half hours. Talk about fast! In a way, the Leaderboards for Bayonetta’s missions made me think of Mirror’s Edge Time Trials, but were far less frustrating. They even made me think, “Maybe this is why racing game fans love playing the same track over and over to beat their best time.” I’m not much of a racing game fan, but I know there are racing fans out there that study tracks, trying to shave seconds off a turn, etc. Bayonetta is this action gamer’s race track. I love it and can keep playing those levels like a racing fan driving those tracks.

After getting through Normal as an appetizer, I jumped into Infinite Climax difficulty and surprisingly, was able to make my way through the game. I actually wondered why I wussed out initially, as I was certainly experienced enough in the game to have developed the skills needed for beating it. On Infinite Climax difficulty, there is no Witch Time, the levels are populated with more difficult enemies, and they do more damage. Fortunately, with the amount of time I had put into Bayonetta, I didn’t realize that I had already been passively training for it. Every technique to dodge, counter, etc. that I had been taught in earlier difficulties got put to the test on Infinite Climax, but I’ll quote Lt. Willy from Starship Troopers: “Remember your training, and you will make it out alive!” I did make it out alive, and amhappy I accomplished my second goal.

Still, I missed Witch Time, since it is not present on the hardest difficulty, so I started playing through various levels on other difficulties to get some better scores. In the midst of playing them, I unlocked a new nunchuku weapon named Sai Fong, which was Bruce Lee’s nickname as a child (Small Phoenix). I looked up what it took to unlock this weapon, and it required beating over 100 levels in Bayonetta.  Each playthrough is 18 levels, so going by that I’ve already gone through the game more than 5 times. I honestly don’t remember the last single-player game that I’ve enjoyed going through this many times. Of course, not many games can be beaten this quickly, but even games like Modern Warfare 1 & 2′s campaigns that are 5-6 hours long – I wouldn’t dare play them over and over again. If Bayonetta had twice the number of levels, I think I would still keep replaying this game. Something about Bayonetta’s combat just has me fully enjoy being a gamer when I play this game.

Now that I’ve accomplished both of my goals for Round 2, I am about ready to retire Bayonetta for a second time. But based on the amount of enjoyment I still got out of playing through Bayonetta two and a half more times this “round”, I have a feeling that there will also be a Round 3. Good gameplay just cannot be put away and forgotten. Even right now I’m thinking how much fun I’d be having if I just went through Bayonetta one more time…

Several of you are aware of my chagrin about having to play The Lost and the Damned during a time when Mass Effect 2 is out, but I made it through the expansion this past weekend and am ready to share my slightly subjective review on it. While this expansion was released on the 360 about a year ago, it was just recently announced that it would be released on the PS3 and the PC in the coming months so perhaps this is a good time to review it now that I’ve noticed that we are getting more PS3 owners (welcome!) here at Leveling Down.

NOTE: I am playing The Lost and the Damned off the retail disc, Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes from Liberty City, which does not require the original GTAIV disc to play. I will be getting through The Ballad of Gay Tony and reviewing that hopefully in the near future.

Initial Impressions
The first thing that happened when I started playing the Lost and the Damned was that I felt like I was in some sort of gaming bizarro world. I had just finished playing Bayonetta, a game that was probably the closest to gameplay nirvana I had encountered in quite some time, but with a storyline and plot worth completely forgetting. Lost and the Damned was practically the opposite. As I started playing this expansion, I felt like the gameplay was just flat out bland and boring, yet the storyline and cutscenes were really drawing me in.

In The Lost and the Damned, you take on the role of Johnny Klebitz, vice president of The Lost motorcycle gang. The story opens with Billy Grey, the gang’s president, getting out of prison and retaking leadership from Johnny. While Billy was in prison, Johnny was acting president and negotiated all sorts of deals and arrangements in order for The Lost gang to “flourish”. However, when Billy comes back and reclaims the leadership of the gang, a lot of friction occurs as Billy wants to go back to the wild and crazy ways of not thinking about consequences to his actions. This power struggle between Johnny and Billy is the heart of the main plot for the expansion, and it’s got quite a hook.

Midway Through
I was getting pretty drawn into the storyline, except I kept getting taken out with the amount of noise my 360 was making reading everything off the disc for The Lost and the Damned. This was a new Jasper 360 model, and it is the kind that is amazingly quiet. When I played Bayonetta, I didn’t hear the 360 make a peep. But with Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City, the 360 was sounding like a launch unit – basically an airplane taking off over and over again. I was scared that the disc drive laser would unalign over the amount of work it had to do, so I finally ended up installing it onto the hard drive. Problem solved. This was the first 360 disc I’ve played on my 360 Jasper where it looked like it was really strained playing the game off the disc. However, even after installing the game to disc, I came across a peeve several times throughout the game: textures just weren’t loading fast enough in Liberty City’s world as I traveled through it. Often times I would find myself traveling through an empty block of land before it suddenly got populated with the street, cars, buildings, and people around me. It was especially annoying in races, when there would be walls that you’d crash into because they wouldn’t load before you saw them.

With regards to the story, it got both better and worse as I made my way through the expansion. The better aspect was that several of the missions Johnny takes are linked to missions in the original GTA IV game. In fact, you cross paths with Niko Belic a few times, and I loved it, as I am certainly a fan of Niko with his head-bobbing walk and accent. The storyline and plot were really good up to about halfway through, but then for some reason or another it just gets poorly told after that. I don’t want to ruin the plot, but once I got about halfway through I started to notice that loose ends started showing up, which had me questioning why or how certain things were happening in the storyline.

With the storyline starting to flounder, it’s not the gameplay that will save this expansion. The GTA games are not exactly known for their strong gameplay, but rather, the freedom to do pretty crazy stuff. Otherwise, most of this expansion’s missions simply revolve around driving somewhere and killing some people. The combat system is passable, but compared to other 3rd person games like Gears of War and Lost Planet, Grand Theft Auto IV’s engine just ain’t the best for combat.

The Lost and the Damned include some extra non-campaign modes such as motorcycle racing and gang wars, but for me I’ve never been a big fan of these side-quest type things that don’t have any sort of plot element attached to them. (For me, my enjoyment with Grand Theft Auto IV  has always been about how the missions  evolve the plot.) Motorcycle racing allows you to race for money throughout Liberty City, but all the racers get to actually hold bats to knock each other off, like the classic Road Rash games of my youth. Gang Wars is basically just you grabbing some gang members and heading to an area to kill everyone from a rival gang. It’s honestly very similar to any mission you’ll play in the game, but of course, there’s no advancement in the plot after you complete a gang war.

Final Thoughts
For longtime readers of Leveling Down, you know the type of games I enjoy most: games with an engrossing storyline and excellent gameplay. The Lost and The Damned starts out with quite the engrossing storyline, but starts tripping up about half way through (although the final mission is pretty sweet). GTA IV’s gameplay was never my real cup of tea. It lets kids have fun jacking cars and running over people, but it doesn’t have the tightness that many other action games this generation provide.

This review created some disparity in my head, as I gave Grand Theft Auto IV an A but am feeling more annoyed with The Lost and the Damned’s game mechanics today yet for the most part they are the same game mechanics I played in GTAIV. Maybe GTA IV just hasn’t aged as well, because when I think about it, I don’t know if I’d give GTA IV an A if I were to play through it again today. Still, this subject of “aging game scores” shouldn’t really be the focus of this game’s review, and I will leave it for another time. If you’re playing The Lost and the Damned today, just be ready for the fact that it might not be all that, even with last year’s reviews all practically giving the expansion high marks.

I’ll leave you all with the fact that while I was willing to forgive various shortcomings of the original GTA IV game, I’m not so much with the expansion. Now that GTA IV’s price has pretty much dropped to $20, I feel like The Lost and the Damned $20 price tag is affecting my review score for the game more than it should. At $20, I cannot recommend anyone to get it unless you’re just a super die-hard GTA IV fan that needs to get more out of it. If it were $5-$10, I would definitely recommend it, as it fits the role of a true expansion to the game: letting you experience the world of Grand Theft Auto IV through a different character with new missions and minor gameplay additions. Unfortunately, the expansion is only a few hours long, and the actual gameplay elements in these missions is quite repetitive (drive somewhere, shoot some people). I’m not exactly looking forward to playing The Ballad of Gay Tony if it’s just like The Lost and the Damned, but who knows – maybe I will be surprised.

Review Score: C+

For the earlier part of this month I had been spending my time with Bayonetta, a newly released title that I truly enjoyed. But after I completed that and DJ Hero this past Tuesday, I discovered that night that it was apparently the Mass Effect 2 launch date. I had already made a conscious decision to skip buying Mass Effect 2 at launch, just because I had already gone through Bioware’s more RPG-oriented epic, Dragon Age: Origins, last month and my pre-ordered copy of BioShock 2 is releasing just around the corner. Plus, with the number of games I have sitting in my backlog, I realized that my gaming time might be better spent clearing through a backlogged title or two before BioShock 2′s release rolls around.

But why is this so difficult?

Several of the people on my friends list are all playing Mass Effect 2 now, so when I see them all online playing it, I can’t help but feel jealous. I’m really missing the party. Here I was Tuesday night, looking at three games to decide which one I would tackle next: Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes from Liberty City, Brutal Legend, and Ghostbusters. I had a really hard time choosing one of these three games, and the underlying reason behind not being able to choose was because none of those three titles was Mass Effect 2. I want to play Mass Effect 2! Screw these older games.

Stupid social networking. Making me feel guilt about the game I’m playing (as well as not playing). If I just became a complete Xbox 360 hermit who deleted everyone on my friends list, I could be blissfully ignorant and play what I think I ought to be playing, instead of feeling pressured to play the shiny new game everyone online is playing. It’s almost torturous to turn on my 360 and load up Grand Theft Auto IV when several of my friends are all online playing Mass Effect 2. I wince in pain when I see the Mass Effect 2 icon on cmfl3x’s profile there on the right sidebar when I don’t have it on mine. I feel like I’m doing something wrong and breaking a rule in being a hardcore gamer or something.

It doesn’t help either that Mass Effect 2 is getting amazingly high review scores. Currently sporting a 96 on Metacritic, it’s tied with BioShock and The Orange Box as the second best game in the entire 360 library after Grand Theft Auto IV. It’s rated higher than Gears of War. Gears of War 2. Halo 3. Modern Warfare 1. Modern Warfare 2. Fallout 3. Street Fighter IV. Batman Arkham Asylum. The combination of cmfl3x and others around me all playing it and this being one of the best titles ever released on the 360 has got me almost going crazy that I am not playing through it now. Bah. Such is the life of an aging hardcore gamer. I have to balance my hardcore gaming desires with practicality and reason. Yet why did I have to pick this game to be my “example” for clearing through older games before buying a new one?

If it’s this hard for me to get through one game in my backlog, I guess it’s going to be a lot more difficult getting through 10.  Now I wish I didn’t have a backlog. When I think about it, I could have easily coasted through this quarter from Bayonetta to Mass Effect 2 to BioShock 2 to Final Fantasy XIII, with Modern Warfare 2 filling in any gaps between the time I beat one game and the time the next one released. And why is my backlog growing again? Simply put: sales on older titles. Maybe I really do need to just adopt the mentality of buying only new games at launch, or maybe only buying a game when I have nothing else to play (as if that’s going to happen). For now, I can just be hopeful that I will clear through that backlog, or I’ll end up selling it like I did with my last backlog.

I almost feel punished right now when I’m playing a backlogged title during a time when everyone around me is playing the shiny new game. I guess I could always go out and buy it to join the party, but I have to stay strong. After all, these backlogged titles aren’t going to play themselves. My vision is to be able to get through these backlogged titles eventually!

Now what the heck am I going to do with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 when I’m not even ready to stop playing Modern Warfare 2 yet? Should I skip the Bad Company 2 launch party as well? I guess after I get some hands on time with the multiplayer demo this weekend, I’ll have a better feel of whether I should wait or buy it at launch.

For those of you playing Mass Effect 2 now – enjoy. I will be playing it in the coming months…if it’s still even relevant then -_-.

Fresh off the great success of GTAIV, Rockstar released another Grand Theft Auto game this past March. GTA: Chinatown Wars was the first GTA offering ever to hit Nintendo’s family friendly DS, and analysts predicted that people would buy it in droves. Unfortunately for Nintendo and Rockstar, the analysts were wrong, though the game has received high praise, the fact of the matter is, nobody is buying it (only a little over 100,000 copies have sold in 2 months which is way below expectations).

I wasn’t planning on picking up a copy, but a friend of mine lent me his. I’ve put a few hours in the game so figured I’d write up a quick retail impressions.

The Good
GTA Lite
The best thing that can be said about Chinatown Wars is that it offers the classic GTA experience to go. I never played the top down GTAs, but supposedly Chinatown Wars feels a lot like that. Liberty City is represented here in its fullest (minus Alderney I think), and the city feels as alive and vibrant as it did in GTA IV. The missions are very accessible and although there are no mid-mission checkpoints, you can finish each mission in about 5 minutes, keeping everything bite sized. Another welcome addition is the fact that you don’t have to drive super far in each mission, keeping everything short.

Drug Wars
The main part of the game’s economy revolves around selling drugs. You get e-mails on your PDA about who is selling at low prices and who will buy high, and you just kind of drive around trading drugs to make money. It is kind of addicting, and sometimes cops or rival gangs try to stop you to keep the action going. It’s classic buy low sell high strategy, but it’s nice to just drive around and make money.

Presentation
Even from the top down perspective, Chinatown Wars is a great looking game. It has good sound effects, the radio soundtrack is decent, and everything looks crystal clear. The story is told through panel cutscenes which are well drawn (but not animated). There is a lot of polish to the game, which is a huge plus. Rockstar obviously didn’t cut any corners.

The Not so Good
Menu Navigation
I find the menus clunky and difficult to use. It took me a long time to figure out how to activate GPS on the bottom screen, and menus don’t really load smoothly. The game looks great but the menu really slows me down.

Stylus or Classic Controls?
Chinatown Wars has a lot of sections where you need to use the stylus (like when you are jacking a car). I hate when games use both the stylus and the regular control pad, and Chinatown Wars does it to a fault. My hand cramps because I need to hold the stylus with my pinky and ring finger while I am playing. It’s not like the stylus works better for some sections, you literally HAVE to use both control styles. Just because the DS has a touch screen doesn’t mean you have to force us to use it!

Lame Storyline
The storyline is beyond lame. Something about your father or uncle being killed? Or something? And you end up working with random mob bosses who are trying to take over the family business? Anyway, the story is a complete throwaway, which is kind of disappointing coming off of the deep storyline (at least the first half) of GTA IV. It doesn’t help that all the characters are egotistical, self serving jerks either. Which leads me to…

The Horrible
Worst. Protagonist. Ever.
I absolutely hate, hate, hate, HATE the main character in this game. He is super arrogant, he tries to be funny by being sarcastic (but he’s not), and all in all he is probably the most unlikeable protagonist I’ve ever seen in a game. The dialogue in this game is horrible, I don’t know if it’s trying to be intentionally bad but it’s to the point where I just want to skip it all. Being a huge story-driven gamer, this really is a major turnoff for me, and the reason why I find myself grabbing Broken Sword instead of Chinatown Wars a lot of the time.

Final Thoughts
I’m going out of town this weekend so I’m going to give Chinatown Wars more time to grow on me. The gameplay is excellent, but the terrible story/dialogue is a real turnoff for me. From reviews I read, the story is universally panned, but most people enjoy the gameplay so much that it doesn’t matter. If gameplay is king for you, the game is probably worth picking up. It has all the classic trappings of a game that I’ll never finish though, so I’m glad I borrowed it instead of bought it.

We really are in the gaming doldrums right now. But hopefully with E3 coming up, we’ll start having some games to look forward to! Anyway, I’ve been playing a lot of this and that - I’m probably TOO diversified in my gaming right now. But hey, I’m having a blast! Apologies in advance for the crazy tone…I’m just in one of those moods.

360 Games: The Main Event

Mirror’s Edge
1000 out of 1000. YAH! I spent the better part of the week shaving seconds off of my time trials and doing the 10 full level speed runs. Although the time trial stuff and speed runs are the best part of the game in my opinion, the speed runs in particular highlighted one of my problems with the game: load times. When you are doing a speed run, sometimes it takes 45 seconds to get between one load time and another, and when you are repeating 6 minute sections of the game over and over, it gets tedious and frustrating. I got super NERD RAGE-y after I had to wait in the same elevator for the 10th time. Mirror’s Edge’s time trials are my proudest achievements since the challenges in Portal though, so I’m not going to complain too much. Of course, “achievement” is such an ironic term, since I have achieved nothing in actuality…

Dead Space
Finishing Mirror’s Edge means I can get back into Dead Space. I’m getting used to the game’s “tricks” when it comes to trying to scare you, which is cool. The sound effects in the game are pretty awesome, especially in the “outside the spaceship sections”. I can see why the game got a lot of positive press and am glad I’m finally getting into it.

Halo Wars/Left 4 Dead
Played a bunch of multiplayer games on separate nights with a few friends in both games, and they are still pretty enjoyable. In Left 4 Dead we had a major Survival FAIL but enjoyed yelling at each other in the process. We fared better in Halo Wars, the balance patch seems to be somewhat helpful, and we had some gratifying wins where we fought off some pretty heavy rushes and countered with awesome. I’m glad these games still have some legs, as playing with friends is one of the big reasons I have a 360 in the first place.

DS Games: Passing the Time

GTA: Chinatown Wars
I played a pretty lengthy session of the game, and it’s definitely more enjoyable the more you get into it. I drove all around the city trading all types of drugs to try to make money…I could probably do that for hours. Some cops tried to bust me with my dope but I got away with some slick driving. The worst part about this game is that the protagonist is a total JERK STORE, so I can’t really empathize with him at all. Nico Bellic (GTA IV) was a homicidal psychopath, but this guy… More on that later.

Broken Sword
Have you ever played Full Throttle? Monkey Island? Or even the old Sierra Robin Hood game? Because Broken Sword is just like those games, a totally awesome point and click adventure! If you played PC games in the 90s, you probably played some of the point and click adventures which were all the rage. Broken Sword is one I somehow missed back then, but it’s been re-released on DS and it’s challenging with a pretty interesting Angels and Demons type storyline and all in all a lot of fun. Ubisoft didn’t bother marketing it at all, which is a shame because if this game did well, maybe they would bring Full Throttle to the DS which I would buy in a heartbeat. If you aren’t sure what a point and click adventure is, basically you just interact with the environment and try to solve puzzles with your brain, and once you do you feel totally awesome. I have a Full Throttle CD but it doesn’t work…heartbreak city. Broken Sword is almost as good though.

PopCap: Who knew?

Peggle
Peggle is kind of like a detox for me, when I feel like throwing my controller at my television screen because Mirror’s Edge makes me feel violent, I just drop to dash, fire up Peggle and watch the ball hit pegs randomly until I am calmed down. Completely clearing a board is very satisfying, and the Achievements give a hefty challenge. It seems at first that the physics and gravity in the game are totally random, but in actuality there are “Peggle Physics” at play, which makes the game even more fun because you can actually strategize.

Plants vs. Zombies
I downloaded the demo and enjoyed it. I’ve never played a tower defense game before so it’s new territory for me. Debating whether I should spring $20 for the Mac version (my old PC laptop is gathering dust and I don’t know if saving 10 dollars is worth it). Gonna wait for espion4ge’s impressions later this week first. SHAMELESS PLUG! What you should ask yourself while you are playing this game though is this: “Sure I don’t want zombies in my house, but do I really want these carnivorous, violent plants either? [Rock] You [Hard Place]“

Mirror’s Edge – Almost finished with this game, although the things I have left to do are the most challenging. I failed a speed run (an entire level under a certain amount of time) by being slow by 2.1 seconds. I then ran it back, and managed to pass by shaving 3.3 seconds off my time. 10:58.8 seconds was enough FTW! Anyway, if you are masochistic and enjoy punishing yourself by trying to shave milliseconds off of your times, you should really play Mirror’s Edge!

Peggle – To take a break from the intensity of Mirror’s Edge I downloaded Peggle on XBLA. I’ve heard a lot about this game but didn’t know too much about it, but figured at $10 I could afford to take the plunge. It’s tough to explain how the game works, but it’s easy to explain that it’s a lot of fun. It’s particularly rewarding every time you clear a stage. I kind of wish I got this for DS, because it’d probably be nicer to play on the go, but it’s a good game to relax with between intense sessions of bigger games.

Chinatown Wars (DS) – I’ve been playing about one mission per night. It’s not as engaging as I thought it would be, but it’s not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination. I’ll probably save the majority of this game for my upcoming trip on Memorial Day.