Play With My Box

Monday, February 25, 2008

In Love With an Assassin

I can thank Assassin's Creed for putting me into a good gaming mood again. I despair however, because I've been playing it non-stop and I'm so very close to the end. With only two more assassination targets to go, my journey as Altair will conclude and I know in my heart there won't be much incentive for me to return to ancient Jerusalem after the last throat has been slit.

Can I wax philosophical praise about this game? This is a fantastic, flawed action-adventure that has fell a bit short of the unimaginable hype surrounding it but in no way deserves the derisive criticisms it's received since its release last November. I'll start by spilling out my gut impressions and dispelling the many unfair criticisms that have been leveled against AC. This will by no means resemble a proper, professional review, rather just a gushing tirade for what I feel is one of the most overlooked games of the 2007 holiday season.

But was it as overlooked as I claim it to be? By last count, I do believe AC has garnered some impressive numbers so far in terms of worldwide sales. While the North American numbers do not even come close to approaching juggernauts such as Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, AC has been enough of a success to justify the inevitable sequel. It warms my heart to know that a new IP that treads off the beaten path a little bit will not fade into obscurity and has the chance of growing into a healthy, profitable franchise.

Hit the jump for more.

Right, so I'm supposed to wax poetic about why I love this game, in the context of a point-counterpoint argument against some criticisms that have been bandied about by fans and the mainstream gaming press. Firstly, there are the controls for the game. Quite simply, AC controls like a dream. Much was made of the intricate, unintuitive controls during AC's showing at last year's E3 and I have to scratch my head a bit after revelling in the joy of controling a graceful avatar such as Altair. Part of the blame can be placed on the Ubisoft developers, who seemed to go out of their way to tout their new-fangled puppeteering system. That was an unnecessary move and it gave the impression that seasoned gamers would have to re-train their fingers to deal with a slew of complicated move sets and control paradigms.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, the control scheme for AC is quite different from the controls any other third-person action game. You should expect a learning curve of about a half hour to acclimate yourself to the various subtleties of handling an acrobatic assassin. A helpful tutorial and introductory level will also spell out all of basic abilities. As the game progresses, you will gain new combat manuevers and you will be always given an opportunity to practice their use in a training arena. In a nutshell, the control issues are woefully overblown.

As a protagonist in a stealth/action game, Altair is more than a one-trick pony. He can alternate between a slow, casual gait (when he's trying to blend in with his surroundings) or a full sprint when he's in a rush or making a frantic escape from the city guards. He's a also a practitioner of parkour, which means that no obstacle is beyond his grasp and he can navigate the environment with the grace and efficiency of a cat. Parkour and free running have been in the spotlight these past few years thanks to movies like Casino Royale and actors like Cyril Raffaelli. AC captures the beauty of this physical art like no other.

If you can imagine the marriage of Stranglehold's auto-diving mechanics, Prince of Persia's flashy acrobatic moves and the death-defying verticality of Crackdown, you have a pretty clear sense of the AC play experience. Getting Altair to dance across the rooftops of Jerusalem is only a matter of holding down the right-trigger and the A button, then steering him in the desired direction. His various moves are handled automatically, depending on his present orientation and the environment around him. At first this feels like cheating, as if the game was playing itself and robbing me the chance to initiate every leap and grab myself. Not so. While it's possible to just rocket Altair around willy-nilly, you'll eventually find yourself tumbling down great heights or tripping over the city denizens, taking much damage and drawing much attention to yourself in the process. No, controlling Altair effectively requires a keen awareness of your surroundings. The contextually sensitive controls will handle all of the dirty work, but you have to pick the best route and play the role of the navigator... a role this is harder than it seems when you need to make haste or find yourself in a pickle with a entourage of angry city guards on your tail.

The combat in AC is also a different sort of beast compared to your typical action game. While stealth is Altair's greatest weapon, I've been forced to bludgeon my through many missions and in fact, I could criticize the designers for not penalizing me more engaging in open combat. I'll explain: combat is all about timing. Timing and observation will save your bacon in a fight against 10 city guards more than your previously honed skills at hammering out mutiple button combos. Your opponents will block most of your attacks and are pretty relentless themselves at ensuring that you are surrounded and overpowered by their superior numbers.

Fortunately, you have at your disposal a very powerful counterattack move that will dispatch lesser enemies instantly, as well as a block-breaking attack when you're ready to go on the offensive. Fighting really boils down to 1 or 2 button presses at any given time. The real beauty of the system is that it rewards excellent timing and a keen eye. Observation plays a key role not only in reacting quickly enough when you see an enemy attack, but also noticing visual cues that will tip you off to when you should initiate your own attacks. For example, guards will sometimes lower their defenses to taunt you, or may even begin to lose their cool a bit after witnessing your butchering of their colleagues. I think the combat is thrilling to both play and watch. The unconventional system may be jarring for gamers raised on Golden Axe or God of War, but like everything else in Creed, the learning curve is pretty low and it didn't take me long master the fighting techniques to the point where I no longer feared the city guards (I would only run away to save time, because frankly, there is an unlimited supply of guards to fight).

This game is not perfect, of course, and there are numerous faults that left me scratching my head wondering why they didn't put in that extra 10 percent that would transform what is already a great game into an astounding one. An instant classic.

More of these criticisms will crop up once I've finished the game. I'm just one hit shy of completing it so I'll come back later and give a more sober view of this game.

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Saturday, February 09, 2008

On the Horizon (Salve for Grumpy Gamer)

If you've read my blog in the last few weeks, you
might think that I'm a lonely, jaded gaming curmudgeon
who is never satisfied by anything less than
perfection. While it's true that the recent spate of
Xbox 360 demos have left me with a serious aftertaste
of total indifference, my gaming passion still burns
intensely. I would love nothing more than to be
impressed by all the new games coming out at the start
of 2008. Sadly, I've just been disappointed so far.

I should mention that I have a lot of optimism for
March, a month which holds a few tantalizing
treasures for me. First we have Army of Two, EA
Montreal's intriguing take on a co-op shooter that is
set to be shipped on March 4th. My curiousity and
expectations have been piqued enough so far that,
barring absolutely dismal review scores, I will likely
be picking this up to play with my co-op buddies.

The coming month will also see the release of Rainbox
Six: Vegas 2. What more can be said about the sequel
to my favourite 360 game? Funnily enough, were I just
a casual fan of the series, I would summarily dismiss
this as a cynical cash-in sequel. In all honesty,
Ubisoft Montreal has not reinvented the wheel. It's
what I like to call an "engine sequel" as opposed to a
generational one. The devs are using the same
technology for the sequel and it's just a matter of
creating new content, tweaking game play and adding on
the bells and whistled they left out the first time
around. That said, I hope RS: V2 makes a more
memorable splash as a "1.5" sequel than Ubisoft's last
effort, GRAW 2.


Finally, news of the upcoming DLC for Mass Effect has
renewed my interest in replaying the game even more.
Well, I've been sprinting my level 52 Shepherd through
all the main story missions even since I got my new TV
but these new downloadable side quests will breathe
some life into the game should I decide to start a new
Shepherd from scratch. The first installment is
touting 90-minutes of new story, which has me a little
confused. If by "story" they mean actual game play
time, then these downloadable episodes will be fairly
short affairs. They will be definitely longer than the
generic side missions included in the core game, but
several magnitudes shorter than a main mission planet.
We'll know when we know, I suppose. The brightest spot
of this news, in my opinion, is the 400 MS points
price point.

Oh, and I was also pleasantly surprised by the Might and Magic Dark Messiah: Elements demo. Yes, this thing was released back in December however the full release is drawing near and I'm impressed enough to give it a shot should the reviews come in favourable. More impressions to come.

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Thursday, February 07, 2008

The Club (Demo)

I don't have much to say about this underachieving, unambitious game except that I found it to be terribly underachieving and unambitious. When given the chance I will preach to the masses about how games are maturing as an artistic and storytelling medium. Games will always find a ready market with kids and teenagers, but the real untapped potential lies in attracting the mind share and passions of discerning adults.

I need only point to recent hits like Mass Effect and BioShock to provide a glimmer into what the future holds for games, when adult themes can be addressed right alongside gripping game play and whiz-bang visuals.

The Club seems to want to take us back several years and almost wallows in its own simplicity. While I have no issues with "straight shooters", I can't get over how such obvious talent and solid production values could be lavished on a full retail version of the "Instant Action" mode you so often find in games that actually bother to include a full story campaign.

With nothing to hang my hat on but the game play, I still went into The Club demo with an open mind, hoping that the shooting action was enough to get me hooked. The first bad sign was seeing the controller layout and discovering a button assigned to the sole act of spinning your avatar around 180 degrees. Once I was dropped into the demo's prison level, I immediately felt the urge to take cover, only to find that no such ability was available even though my enemies took liberal advantage of walls and overturned tables.

Blasting enemies to bits was simple enough although many of the guns suffered from Pea Shooter Syndrome. I also wondered why they bothered offering me 3 types of pistols that all handled the same way. The real difficulty of the game comes from achieving a set number of points for each level. It's not enough to dispatch your enemies: you have to do it in style and do it efficiently. Crucial points are awarded if you string together combos and kills lose their value if you go too long without taking a life.

Once I clued into this whole concept, my antipathy towards the whole game really set in. The core game play is perfectly valid... for a Live Arcade title perhaps, but it's hardly substantial enough to base a full-price retail game around.

Like anything else these days, an uninteresting game can be bolstered by a co-op mode, but I couldn't even muster up the effort to see if one was offered. But really, if it's co-op mass killing I'm looking for, why not just play more Terrorist Hunt in Rainbow Six: Vegas?

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Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Mass Effect: 1, Cooper Lawrence: 0

Just an addendum to my earlier rant about gaming's treatment by the mainstream media...

It was a quiet shift for me last night. There was hardly a peep for technical support, which lead me off on a web surfing tangent. I suddenly felt the urge to read the vengeful user reviews posted on Amazon.com for Cooper Lawrence's new book, The Cult of Perfection: Making Peace with Your Inner Overachiever.

So I typed in "Cooper Lawrence" into Amazon's search and what greeted my eyes? Yes, Ms. Lawrence's book appeared at the top of the search results page, accompanied by the 1-star average rating. Just below her book, however, was none other than Mass Effect, sitting pretty with an average 4.5-star rating.

I got a good chuckle out of that. It was a shining moment in an otherwise dull and quiet night shift at the office.

p.s. - The user reviews are very entertaining. Not quite as fun as playng Mass Effect, but a satisfying waste of 15 minutes all the same.

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Monday, February 04, 2008

Xbox Marketplace Demos Do Not Impress

Maybe I'm getting more selective in my old age, or perhaps I've grown jaded as a gamer going on 20 years now. I just couldn't get excited for any of the recent demos gracing our beloved Xbox Live Marketplace. I've even been looking forward to the full releases for a couple of these titles and the demos have failed miserably in their sales pitch.

Let's start with Turok, a 21st century reboot of the 2nd-tier shooter franchise that started with the N64. As the first shooter of 2008, I think it'll make a decent splash but from what I gathered from the demo, it really is an unremarkable experience. The feel of the controls is solid, although not quite there when it comes to movement speed and camera look sensitivity. The weapons feel almost deadly enough to be satisfying, but do not feel fun to shoot, with the exception of bow and the hunting knife. The graphics in the outdoor areas can also be breathtaking (and the interactive, swaying grass is the best I've seen in a game) but has a crudeness to it that really detracts from the game's overall polish. I also thought the introduction of dinosaurs mixed in with human opponents would be a refreshing change. When I can dispatch velociraptors with a single knife kill, however, I quickly got the sense that the dinos were more window dressing and a way to take your attention away from the weak enemy AI of the humans. The Turok demo is an experience of "almosts" and "not quites", and that's not enough for me to go out and buy it.

Next up, is Devil May Cry 4. This demo was pretty fun, except the first level offered to you is timed to end after 10 minutes, while the second level consists of a boring trek through a snowy wasteland, followed by a semi-interesting dual boss battle.

Let me come clean and confess that I've never understood the appeal of the DMC series. I've tried out previous installments on the PS2 and really didn't appreciate the typically Japanese storyline (convoluted, opaque and long winded all at once) and really didn't get sucked in by the combat system. What we have here is a guy with some very cool moves and a gun. At the end of the day, however, all he's really doing is excecuting all his fancy moves on a horde of inert, brainless enemies. And that's the exact same impression I got from the DMC4 demo. The gun is an absolute pee shooter, so it's worthless when you can just engage enemies up close and have your way with them. Enemies seem programmed to attack exactly once every 15 seconds and are more than happy to idly watch as you unleash a 20 hit combo on their friends. Some other niggling gameplay quirks involve using the jump button to open doors and the constant switching between free camera and fixed camera controls, depending on the area you've entered. Please, just pick one or the other... and when I say that, pick the free camera controls (you've demonstrated that you can implement it, so why not stick with it through the entire game?).

This is an okay premise to base a game on, mind you and I'm a fan of button mashers. I just get rubbed the wrong way when a game like this gets all this undue hype. Yes, the graphics are very pretty and the attack moves are very hypnotic to watch. Frankly, I'd rather just play some more Conan, which really is the same type of game. Oddly enough, Conan was savaged by reviewers, earning 6 or 7's, while I see that DMC4 is getting many 8's and 9's. Meh, to each his own, I suppose. The demo was fun for a quick play through but it failed to convert me over to the flock.


Burnout Paradise was also disappointing (see a trend here?). I admire developer Criterion's efforts to evolve their racing series. I just think they're missing the point. Racing games are for racing... beating the time, winning the race or, in Burnout's case, smashing up vehicles in glorious slow-motion. Personally, the last thing I want to do is put the pedal to the metal, only to peer at a mini-map every 5 seconds or slow down looking at street signs. I know it's a popular move now to create an open-world environment but let's match the genres to the proper design theories, okay? Open world works when you actually have a world worth exploring, a world with its own story and filled with unique interactions. Burnout Paradise is simply Burnout without menus. The whole concept seems cribbed straight out of Crackdown which also required players to hunt down race markers littered around an open-world city in order to actually start a race. Guess what? Despite its limitations, Crackdown let you do a lot more than just race cars. Burnout Paradise is just the same old racing goodness that's packaged incorrectly.

I would keep going with my impressions of The Club and Turning Point demos, but I think I'm spent for this morning. That, and I need to get ready for work.

Happy Gaming!

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Sunday, February 03, 2008

Two Days of HD

My LG HDTV
My new LCD TV was delivered to me on Friday and I've been popping in all of my 360 games to see how well the life is breathed back into them. Not surprisingly, the bump up to 720p or 1080p coupled with the 16:9 aspect ratio has done wonders to almost every game that I've tried in my games library. It's amazing how quickly I recalibrated my expectations once my eyes were exposed to the visual splendor. I can never go back to standard definition on my dusty old CRT.

Although the visuals were a treat for my eyes, I was also pleasantly surprised at the quality of my new TV's built-in speakers. Maybe I've just grown accustomed to the truly horrid audio on my old Toshiba, but I've never been bothered too much by it. Well, consider my standards for TV audio raised a couple notches now, as I'm not only seeing details and colours that I missed out in standard def, I'm also better able to appreciate new subtleties in the sound design of my games.

I spent the better part of Friday evening just playing games and tooling around with my LG's interface. Here's a brief recap what it was like to have my high definition cherry popped...

Hit the jump for my giddy account.


300
A friend of mine was kind enough to hang out with me on Friday to help me pass the time while I anxiously waited for the TV deliver and later to assist with hefting my old TV to my bedroom and setting up the new one. I had gotten him hooked on Rock Band already but the first thing he wanted to see on the new TV was a movie, so I popped in the 300 DVD and proceeded to be unimpressed. I'm beginning to see what all the hype is with this Blu-Ray and HD-DVD stuff. There is a level of clarity to movies that I've seen in the Future Shop display televisions that simply cannot be matched by run-of-the-mill DVDs. Still, after I had actually switched my Xbox 360 display settings to 1080p and replayed parts of the movie, I noticed a marked improvement.

BioShock
This game already looked amazing on my crappy old set and the move to a 42" high definition screen tips it into the realm of visual perfection.

Rock Band
I wasn't expecting a big change in visual quality when I popped the disc in and sure enough, I was right. The extra screen real estate really helps in multiplayer mode but this game is really more about the music than jaw-dropping visuals. One jarring change, however, was the calibration of the instruments, which only differed by several milliseconds but it completely threw my timing off. I still haven't got my guitar and drums calibrated perfectly so that's my little project this week when I have some spare time.

Rainbow Six: Vegas
I finally got around to taking my favourite 360 game for a spin. To commemorate this occasion, I grinded out some rounds of Terrorist Hunt and finally achieved the Elite rank! The graphics didn't become amazing suddenly; it was more about the small details. All the HUD details were easier to read, tracking enemies at a distance became much easier and overall, the presentation just looked slicker. With the improved speakers, I also really enjoyed the sound of gunfire. It really felt like I was hearing the same old sound effects in a new way.

Gears of War
This game undoubtedly looks impressive in maximum resolution but I didn't get the "wow" response I was expecting. I only loaded up the final battle with General RAAM, mind you, so I'll need to play through more of the game to really get a sense of the improved visuals.

Mass Effect
This game is a sigh to behold. Of all the games I've tried with my new TV so far, I'd say Mass Effect has benefited the most. It's looking so fine, I'm happily going through the Hardcore campaign again when just a few weeks earlier I was ready to shelf this game for good.

Crackdown
I was frankly amazed how much better this game looks on a big screen. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. This game is all about over the top, larger than life action, as well as bounding betweenskyscrapers like a maniac, so it's only proper that you have a big-ass viewing area properly display all of these antics. I'll definitely be admiring more of Pacific City again.

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