Hells jeah!: More Oddworld games

And then came the good news. Apparently Just Add Water is working, not just one one, but "working on multiple projects, across multiple platforms", in the Oddworld universe, featuring "all of your favourite Oddworld characters". Apparently, this has been in the works for some time now. So, we should be seeing announcements soon.

This really is exciting news. Though I seemed to be in the minority, I really enjoyed both of JAW's Oddworld installments on the original Xbox. I liked the faux RTS and platforming elements of Munch's Oddysee and found Stranger's Wrath to be a fun bounty hunting-style game, in the first half. Then, an interesting twist on FPS games, in the second. Both had excellent stories, filled with fun humor and endearing characters. I'm really looking forward to what they have to show.

While you're waiting, apparently you can follow good ol' Abe on Twitter, why doncha?

Via Kotaku

Aw, maaaannn....

Just found out on Kotaku that groundbreaking, massively multiplayer/multiviewer game-show 1vs100 has been cancelled after two seasons. This really bums me out. For it's two seasons, I ended up playing with some regularity. In my home life, I've sworn off watching broadcast television. This is largely due to me hating having to maintain a tv-watching schedule. 1vs100 was the first thing in a long time I actually made it a point to be home for, when I could remember it. There are some allegations that it's cancellation is due to mismanagement, but who knows? It would be nice to know that the game was cancelled for a reason, other than poor "ratings". There is some speculation that Microsoft will push forward with different projects, using 1vs100's framework. So, there's hope. However, I have to worry that it'll come with it's own price tag to go alongside it's commercial advertising.

So long, Chris Cashman, we hardly knew ye.

Meanwhile: Back on the USG Ishimura...

Dead Space still has one of the best opening sequences for a game I've experienced. Just a heads up.

Red Dead Endurance.

I'm not saying I dislike the game. Quite the opposite, for the most part. The setting has been fun and Marsten has made for a compelling lead, somewhat unconventional compared to usual Rockstar fare. I've also been finding a lot of enjoyment in the arena of multiplayer. Something Grits and I have dug into and, generally speaking, found to be refreshing and fun (with the exception of the occasional griefer). What I am saying is that the game is wearing me down a bit. Particularly in the theater of Mexico, which I am currently bogged down in. Worn me down to the point that I've begun to take breathers from it and go back to older games I never finished. Though I am enjoying the game, I'm troubled that, most nights, I can't even look at it.

This is one of the first times in a game I'm enjoying that I've experienced doldrums. The problem really seems to be that there's just SO much to do that ends up amounting to very little. Those of you whom are playing know Marsten's motivations. He's looking for members of his old gang to bring to justice. Obviously, he has to establish leads. Unfortunately, each lead ends up having a list of chores that would put my old Mamaburn to shame. Honestly, in light of Marsten's badass persona, it kind of takes you out of the story when he's always acquiescing humbly and kicking his feet in frustration every time a lead tells him they just need "one more favor", from him, before they give up his quarries location. This has been particularly frustrating in Mexico, which seems to have no end in sight.

In future games in this genre, I'd like to see Rockstar concentrate on making multi-task missions that further the story in bigger chunks, rather than peppering the landscape with one-offs you're forced to run back and forth to. It's okay if they're not great feasts of content, but I would prefer a nice lunch spread to the widely scattered Bagel Bites we end up having.

Lost Planet 2, how could it come to this...

I make no apologies, I haven't posted anything in a LONG time. I've been too busy playing games to write about them. I plan to make a first half 2010 wrap-up post in the future, we'll see it that happens.

Anyway, I need to vent about Lost Planet 2. I really liked the first Lost Planet, that demo that came out right around e3 2006 really blew me away. Then when the full game came out it along with Dead Rising really solidified the Xbox 360 and Capcom as the start of the real 'next gen gaming'.

It is just plain shocking to me how wrong things went with Lost Planet 2. To me it seems like some big wigs back in Japan heard about the crazy 10+ million sales Call of Duty was getting year after year, thought to themselves, 'What's the closes thing we have to these western online shooters?' some told them Lost Planet still has an active online community and then went with that. Lost Planet 2 really seems like a game made by people trying really hard to make a great competitive shooter, but had no idea what makes a shooter good. Like Aliens trying to make a cake, they are able to make something that looks like a cake but they missed the point that a cake needs to taste delicious.

The controls in the game are just plain bad, they are sluggish and unintuitive. The closest thing to conventional shooter controls is B-1 which is 5 of 8 in the list. Obviously they weren't quite sure who would like what so they had tons of control and gameplay options, thinking hopefully someone would find something that works for them. Even if you can get past the weird control scheme, which I'm sure you can. You can't get past how sluggish they feel, the responsiveness of your input is a slave to long animations, and realistic things like getting staggered and knocked down (not fun). On top of all this the weapons I had access to didn't feel good, they were all gimped in some way, super slow reload, no sustained fire, slow movement, low ammo.

The game tries so hard to force you to play multiplayer that you actually have to fish around in the menus to setup an offline game, even then forces you to roll with three AI team mates with fake gamertag names like 'Death Summer', gross. So after hearing all the bad things about this game I scoured the menus before starting to make things as easy as possible, all I wanted to see were the big mechs and big bosses. I ended up playing offline, easy, with friendly fire off. So here are some crazy conventions they force at you. You can only save at the end of full chapters (which can be three of four missions long), your AI team mates can run ahead at start triggering events without you. They have tons of killstreak like in game popups that keep showing up, but they don't seem to do ANYTHING, no challenges, no achievements tied to them, the game just wants to let you know all the time that you have killed 10 guys in a row with a shotgun.

The story in the first Lost Planet wasn't great, but it is exciting and crazy. Dead father you are trying to avenge, waking up with amnesia, falling in with a band of space pirates, giant glowing buglike aliens, and big smack talking battles in mechs. This games 'story' is nothing more than four faceless, nameless, dicks going in to wipe out other faceless, nameless dudes in short 5-10 minute 'mission' burst. If you are lucky you might find a few buglike aliens to shoot along the way, but more often than not you don't see one. To add insult to this horrible setup after you fight with your guys for an episode, you then switch to a different group of faceless, nameless guys that look kind of different. The best part, when you switch to the new group you are level 1 again, so after all this time leveling up my guy and not really getting anything useful from it, now I can start all over again... unbelievable. It is shocking that they advertised this game with hidden unlockable characters Wesker from Resident Evil, and Marcus and Dom from Gears of War. It just highlights even more how generic and forgettable their own characters are in this game.

The game is so at odds with itself, in the first game the 'hook' was literally a hookshot that let you do some cool vertical climbing and combat, getting in giant mech suits with huge guns, and killing lots of bug like aliens with glowing weakpoint bits, then watching them freeze and shatter as they died. They missed almost all of this in Lost Planet 2. Going through the first 2 episodes, about 4 hours of time and 20 missions I rarely found an occasion to platform or climb with my hookshot, I rarely found a mech to use and when I did I didn't have it for very long. I rarely fought the buglike aliens, except for the rare giant boss battles which on easy difficulty never felt very fun. It just felt like going through the motions, running from point A to point B and killing some faceless human whatevers along the way. No soul, nothing to set it apart from the vast sea of far more competent shooters out there.

After the first night of playing this some weird feeling came over me, I thought "I can finish this game on easy, I know I can, I should do it just to say I did". I felt like survivor-man or some other weird reality TV show where people are forced to do horrible things for others amusement. After two more nights things were starting to wear on me, I started to look for a lifeline, something to keep me going. I checked out the achievements for the game, at that point I had 3 story based ones for a total of 30 points. One more mind boggling design choice showed up, almost all of the 50 achievements in the game are hidden. So no clues or hints on things I should try to concentrate on in this game that I am forcing myself to finish anyway. My last hope? Gamefaqs, I though "I'll just see how long this game is and maybe get some tips for achievements and secrets that I'm probably missing". Well as of almost a month and a half after this game came out, no one has made any sort of faq or guide for this game, that is shocking and telling.

I could write much more, but I'm out, I'm done, there are many better games on my shelf that are fighting for my time, Alan Wake especially is very mad I've wasted my time on this game while he waits.

Capcom, get your crap together please, you shouldn't have release this game.

The Bail-Out: Red Faction Guerrilla

Today's post brought to you by The Letter Shame. I rarely do this, but today I Bail Out of a game. The last time I did this, and the burning shame of it still tears at the corners of my soul to this day, was Gun. It was the final game I played for the original Xbox, if that helps you gauge how long I've been carrying that weight. I made it all the way to the final boss of the game, but just could not put him to bed, somehow. I didn't so much give up, as I put it down to save my marriage, due to my immature tantrums. Coincidentally, today's Bail Out is also over an open-world game.

I had heard, for so long, great things about this Red Faction Guerrilla game. Most specifically about it's destruction physics. Now, I must tell you that the aforementioned physics have nothing to do with my Bail Out. They are, as advertised, top notch. Trouble was, I only got to enjoy them a little bit at a time.

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Red Faction Guerrilla, for me, suffered from what you would expect from an open world game. There are several missions spread out over it's vast landscape. You spend a bit of time preparing for said missions, time driving to said mission, and then time participating in said mission. The problem with Red Faction was that I died. A lot. Rather quickly, as well. In a game like GTA IV, I didn't often feel the pinch of this, because GTA IV was a vibrant world, full of endearing characters and interesting stories. Red Faction (being set on a colonized Mars), unfortunately is a rather barren landscape filled with NPC's you'll never talk to and missions which are all largely based around destroying random property owned by the faceless, oppressive Villain Company.

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Oppressive Villain Company is well staffed and well supplied. When I tried to tackle these missions, Oppressive Villain Company oppressed the ever-living life out of me. Rather quickly, for the most part. This sent me back to home-base and docked me a few loyalty points from the surrounding community. So, I start at square one with the preparation, the driving, and the participation again. The driving, in particular, was what got really old. This is a complaint you hear often with open-world games. Red Faction lost me because there was nothing between the gaps to make me want to keep going. Just brown mountains, NPC's who don't talk to you, repetitive missions, and a protagonist who doesn't really interact with anyone. It just wasn't fun for me anymore.

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So, sorry Red Faction Guerrilla, I just didn't have what it took to endure you. Not going to say you're a bad game, or give you a score at all. For all I know, you're a great piece of work for someone made of sterner stuff. I hope you find them out there Red Faction. Somewhere out where dreams come true.

Splinter Cell: Conviction- Long Overdue Thoughts*

*It should be noted, Super-Early, that I am reviewing the games single-player campaign. The coop campaign remains untouched, and I couldn't really give a squirt about the multiplayer modes.

Man, I let myself get WAY too far past finishing this game. I feel, partly, to blame for not remembering this game particularly well, but I also think some of the blame falls on SC:C's shoulders. Take a wild guess where this review is going. ON TO, The Bad

Done, already? The game feels painfully short. I feel like this is largely due to the games notoriously rocky development. I want to believe that there was a lot that Ubisoft Montreal would have liked to have put in the game. But, after drastically overhauling the look of the game and other such speed bumps, there was a lot that had to be dropped just to get the game out at all. I know that, recently, members of UbiMont stated that being able to move bodies, a staple of the series, was one of the thing they just didn't have time for. That being said, from a purely single-player standpoint, the game just flies by.

Did Sam... Forget something? Something I also assume is because of the stilted production schedule, is Sam's skeleton-crew of abilities. I really miss wall-splits. Gadgets like sticky-cams that make noises and moves like capturing guards and dragging them into the dark are still there, but aren't nearly as useful due to the change in gameplay and tone. I wasn't opposed to the change in tone of the game, but I miss a certain amount of the stealth and precision.

Feeling chatty, Fish-sher?!... Whenever troops are alerted to your presence, the absolutely, positively can-not shut the hell up. Insults upon insults upon questions upon statements are thrown at you. Usually punctuated with a veeeery disgusted "FISH-SHER?!". It's overkill to the point of being distracting and annoying.

A little empty For a story that is supposed to re-jigger and revolutionize the Sam Fisher canon, the game's story ends up being a bit thin and really doesn't drastically change or re-establish Sam as much more than a rogue version of what he was before. A small portion of what Sam's relationship with his daughter must have been over the years was, in my opinion, poorly explored, but a step in the right direction. Would have helped sympathize Sam and maybe help you give a damn about his daughter.

Well, good to get that out of the way. Now, The Good

Run n' Gun I know I just barely said that I miss some of the stealth and precision that previous Splinter Cell games afforded the player, but having the franchises base elements forced into a more action oriented theme was more refreshing than it was a whiff. If nothing else, I can say I never felt bored during the game.

Mark and Execute The idea of being able to mark and terminate multiple targets hands-free, as a bonus for getting a close-up kill was a lot of fun. It also provided a good out in situations that would have, in previous installments, been too sticky to get out of otherwise. It also gave the player a sense of badassedness that I enjoyed a greatly.

Good ol' Sam Some of this may come from running jokes on the Giant Bombcast, but Conviction gave me a good excuse to catch up with a character I've always liked. He's maybe a little off course at times, but Sam Fisher does enough Sam Fishering throughout the story to have satisfied me. You stay Classy, Michael Ironside.

If there were one thing that really tips Conviction over the edge, it's the length. The things that were good about the game really were enjoyable and the bad were all tolerably ignorable. Unfortunately, just as I felt like I was really getting into it, it was over. Keeping in mind that there is a coop campaign, as well as multiplayer modes, I still feel like the story holds the game back from being something great. I still plan on playing the coop campaign at some point, so there is value there. As it stands, however, if a single-player experience is what you're after, Splinter Cell: Conviction is a solid rental. Hard to justify at retail prices, however.

Mandatory Numerical Score? 8.0