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Oct 14th, 2013 at 09:55:42 - Incredipede (PC) |
I've decided to rename this game Incrediboring. I was at my dad's this weekend for family wedding stuff and played this for a couple hours on and off with my little brother. Even he didn't like it. Perhaps my biggest mistake was getting my hopes up that Incredipede would be more than it is. I didn't do any research on it before buying it, just grabbed it on sale for like $1.50 because I remembered my girlfriend telling me about it and that her friends were excited about it. My mistake, my mistake.
I thought the game was about creature building to solve puzzles, and it is, but to a very small degree. You control a creature called Quozzle or something similar. It's a single eyeball and has various appendages and muscles. Quozzle is awkward as hell to control, as difficult as Octodad but not as humorous. It's a simple app-style puzzle game where you traverse a path of levels in each world. In each level, you are supposed to try and get some object (a cherry, a rock, whatever mundane item it happens to be) and then get Quozzle to the edge of the screen. Quozzle's eyeball has to touch the object for it to be picked up. So that's it. Collect the item and reach the exit. Each level (through about 1.5 worlds at least on easy and normal) has only 1 or 2 objects and exists on a single screen such that the actual distance from beginning to goal is probably like 15 feet. The levels are small.
On easy difficulty, you do not get to manipulate Quozzle's limbs and muscles. Her shape is given and you just collect the item and reach the end. This is ridiculously boring. We played easy for a while until we couldn't take it anymore. On normal, you sometimes, but not always, get to build Quozzle. You start with the eyeball, then just drag from the eyeball to create limbs. Then you can create muscles that move either clockwise or counterclockwise. You basically have to figure out how to build her such that she is able to traverse rocks and lava and deal with wind and other obstacles. While initially cool to be able to build Quozzle, and I was beginning to have some hope for the game, you can do everything you're going to do the very first time you can build Quozzle. You don't get anything new ever. You just have to deal with some new obstacles. The thing is, none of the obstacles or objects to get are really challenging. They're mostly just irritating because of Quozzle's wonky movement and the fact that attaching muscles to turn clockwise or counterclockwise on various joints is just an exercise in how long your patience can last endless trial-and-error.
There is a level editor that I didn't play with and you can go online and see how other people completed the levels, how they built Quozzle. You can upload your completions for others to see. That's a pretty cool feature. You can make some neat-looking Quozzles, but with just appendages and clockwise/counterclockwise muscles, there's not a lot of options relatively speaking. Other games have done creature creation/manipulation way better. I'm thinking specifically of World of Goo and Spore. Even though I really didn't like Spore, the creature creator with its myriad options was super cool. Incredipede was just plain boring.
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Oct 8th, 2013 at 13:26:11 - EVE Online (PC) |
Quitting EVE after toying with it a couple months. All my free time is up and they are asking me to pay. Actually I have another 60-day card, but I'm giving it to someone who will get more out of it. About once a week, I think to myself, "Aw crap, my skills probably finished training a couple days ago. When is the last time I logged on?!" And I realize it's usually been a week. I just can't be bothered to log on and play! I just don't find it exciting, I don't have anything I want to do enough to go do it, outfitting a ship and doing pretty much anything takes a while and involves navigating a lot of menus.
On top of all that, about 10 days ago I got my ship blown up. Or rather, P got both our ships blown up. He'd lost a lot of ships, but I had been playing conservatively because, well, I don't wanna die. We'd devised a fun plan to play together where I would fit my ship with guns and armor and he would scout out hidden places to explore. I'd kill things and he'd salvage the goods that were left floating in space. We decided to warp to an anomaly in 0.7 space (1.0 is perfectly safe [high security, or hi-sec] and 0 is terribly dangerous [null-sec]). I guess we shouldn't have been anywhere but 1.0 or maybe 0.9 because we got obliterated. I warped in first to take out any enemies. There were about 30 of them and they toasted me. In my frantic state, I couldn't remember how to warp away from danger and my ship exploded. I should have warned P, but I think a part of me, since he brought me (lured me?!) into 0.7 space and certain doom, didn't warn him and he warped in right as I blew up and got blown up himself. He laughed his ass off and I was demoralized because I'd just spent 1/3 of my money upgrading all my weaponry and things just to go on this mission. P has had a mining ship and has been making money that way so when he dies it's not a terrible setback.
That death sealed the deal really. My character is currently in a replacement ship I bought somewhere between where my old one blew up and where all my stuff is stashed. I never even bothered to log in and fly back home. It would feel like starting over. No motivation.
So it turns out that what everyone says about EVE is true. EVE is hard. If you are still playing after 6 months, you'll play a long time after. I made it two. P said that he will stick around and try to get into EVE University still so that "I didn't just spend two months mining to make money." I don't want to do EVE University because it just seems like more time and more commitment. So long, EVE! It's been an interesting ride!
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Oct 8th, 2013 at 08:52:46 - Killzone 3 (PS3) |
Killzone 3 refines the gunplay that I felt was already excellent in Killzone 2. By "refinement" I mean it is more sleek and feels like every other AAA FPS in the 2010s. Killzone 2 had no auto-aiming and felt a little old-school in the gun department. I appreciate the crispness of aiming in 3, but it does feel like it bent to conformity. I think that's a big theme in the game's design, is just bending to what's hot. This involves a lot of Gearing like I talked about in my Killzone 2 entry, which is odd because I thought Gears of War was very unique. Maybe I should call it CoD-ing. I dunno. Either way, the production value was ramped up even higher. The game looks amazing and sounds great too. The "stealth" part through the Helghast wilderness was a visual wonder.
The story took a turn for the better too. There's more they try to tell in this game, which made it a little more interesting. You get to see some of the internal conflict in Helghast high command. Killzone 2 had these out-of-place Soviet-style propaganda posters up all over the Helghast city. They were weird because there wasn't really anything Soviet about the Helghast besides that they were very militarized. Like, no communist-leaning ideology, and I don't think they needed propaganda because everyone seemed to be on board with being a completely militarized society. Anyway, in Killzone 3, you meet the Helghast high command, or Senate or whatever they are called, and they are designed to look exactly like Nazis or Soviet-era Communists. I think this is silly more than anything since the society still has nothing to do with Nazism or Communism. One of the members even had a Hitler mustache. Go google pictures of the Helghast senate to see what I mean. Questionable artistic choices aside, their internal politics add a little depth to the story and that was a good thing.
They tried to tell more narrative with your squad too, not in the sense of backstory or anything, which I think is a shame and something that I would have WANTED them to do like Gears of War, but in terms of the relationships between the characters and having them display more emotions and things. This was still welcome, like Rico expressing regret for spoiler spoiler and Narville finally admitting his plans aren't always correct and letting Sev and Rico gung-go it. The only problem with this approach is that sometimes it interrupted otherwise exciting gameplay segments with cut scenes. I only didn't like this when those gameplay segments were too short. Other times it was fine, but the length of gameplay segments/frequency of cut scenes was disjointed.
Another aspect of the game that made it feel disjointed were many of the "gunner" segments. These were the times when you get in a vehicle that is 100% on rails and you just aim and shoot at things. This actually happened a lot and, while visually and kinaesthetically pleasing, was just sort of lame because you can never actually drive the vehicles and you have no control over anything in the segment except shooting at things. And all the weapons for all these vehicles are the same. Left trigger fires missiles or rockets. Right trigger is the machine gun. These didn't even have to be in the game. They just felt tacked on, there because they had to be because gunner segments are cool and that's what Call of Duty does. Since they did put them in, they should have been more open-ended and given the player more control over driving at least, or changed up the weapon types or something to add variety. There were also "did it because we have to" style stealth and horror elements. One level in particular has you stealthing through a gorgeous Helghan environment sniping and stealth-killing (another addition to the game, Gearing) enemies silently by pressing L1 when you get near them. Very out of place gameplay in the context of the rest of the game. The horror bit was lame too, felt forced, and reminded me exactly of when you go in the refinery or whatever in Gears and find the mutated spider thingies...what a coincidence, you're also in a refinery here and find mutated spider thingies!
There was *slightly* more gun variety in Killzone 3 than 2. They added some type of energy gun that was fun to use and...I think the bolt gun was new. They also let you detach machine gun turrets and carry them around, which was sweet. You can carry 2 primary weapons in Killzone 3 instead of K2's 1 primary. So you can always have 1 "heavy" weapon like the machine gun turret or sniper rifle and 1 normal weapon like a submachine gun or assault rifle, and then of course the pistol. This was an obvious improvement from Killzone 2 because you could switch weapons on the fly and expand your tactical repertoire to deal with a variety of situations.
Unfortunately though, again, there isn't much enemy variety. You fight all Helghast soldiers with different guns. This time there is a melee version that rushes you, some with lightning guns and one with a jetpack. Oh, by the way, I was excited to be able to use a jetpack. I think it was a feature on the box. You only get it for one level! It was lame. They also had tiny bits of levels with low gravity, which was also poorly done. Anyway, jetpack enemies. There were like no boss fights in the game, which was disappointing. There was a giant segment where you take down a big walker but it wasn't that great. Toward the end of the game, the levels get very corridor-y. You just go down corridor after corridor after corridor and fly an underwhelming spaceship gunner part for the finale. It was in the corridor-y parts that they bring the low gravity trick. The low gravity trick could have been cool if it was used for anything at all, but it wasn't. Enemies don't take advantage of low gravity and neither can you. If you jump you just float up in the air, a simple target for enemies to shoot down. Yet when your AI teammates jump, they don't float. Hmm. Enemies also float when you kill them, for whatever reason. Alive - grounded. Dead - float. Huh?
Oh yeah, before I forget, one more Gearing thing. You can revive your AI teammates and they revive you too. This was sort of stupid because half the time they wouldn't revive you and half the time they would. When they won't, they say things like "There's too much enemy fire" and "You're too far away." Most of the time I argue they definitely could reach me if they'd just run and do it. Then sometimes like they wouldn't revive you if they'd recently revived you and other times they'd do it 3 times in a row without a problem. I didn't like that there were no hard and fast rules so that I never could guess very well whether or not I'd be revived. Anyway, not that huge a deal.
Last thing I'll say to wrap up...the end sucked. It ends abruptly, no epilogue or anything. After a trilogy of games, I expect an epilogue or some wrapping up or something. Then there was a little part in the middle of the credits that I won't ruin, but was just dumb.
Killzone 3: fun game, worth playing especially if you like the series. Beautiful game. Killzone 2 is the better one. Read there's a sequel for PS4 on launch. Wonder how it'll compare?
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Oct 8th, 2013 at 11:49:58.
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Oct 8th, 2013 at 08:11:42 - KillZone 2 (PS3) |
Killzone 2 was awesome, a huge step up in all things from Killzone. Sometime between the two games, the developers learned how to make a fun FPS. It's a little weird writing this now after also finishing Killzone 3, which I'll get to momentarily. Killzone 2 I guess was one of PS3's big-name shooters along with the Resistance series. It's got AAA production values with good voice actors, good audio and stunning visuals. The environmental art in particular had my jaw dropping. Each area looks huge and dwarfs any skirmish that is happening when the camera pans out, and when you look around you, you're in awe of the scale. I kept thinking how many battles like this were happening all over the city and nearby areas. The narrative also is much better told than in Killzone. In Killzone, the Helghast invade Earth. After driving them away, in Killzone 2 humanity goes on the offensive and attempts to capture Scolar Visari, the Helghast's leader, on their planet, Helghan. The planet is harsh and cold and has crazy lightning storms, which the Helghast harness and use for their defense system. After the first wave of the assault is decimated by said lightning defense system, your objective changes to go figure out where all the energy comes from and whatnot. You find out there's a giant power grid and some mineral that the Helghast use, so you destroy the power grid and move on to Visari again. He nukes his own capital city to prevent you from getting at him, but you go anyway, kill his security detail and kill him. Roll credits.
At least halfway through, the game started to show signs of what I will call "Gearing," that is, being uncannily similar to Gears of War. Gears also takes place on a harsh and brutal planet. It also has a mysterious energy source lurking underneath that the bad guys also harness for their military. In Killzone 3, there are even little spider enemies filled with said mysterious energy that explode when you shoot them, just like the little spider enemies in Gears of War that are filled with mysterious energy that explode when you shoot them! Your squad in Killzone 2 and even more in 3 begins to resemble your squad in Gears. Similar banter, similar ideals and issues. Problem is they're not nearly as well done, which is not necessarily a criticism because Gears had perhaps the best characterization of any shooter I've ever played. Killzone's characters are functional. You're the level-headed one. Rico is the hothead who is going to disobey every order. Narville is the one who gives orders and does everything by the book and plays it safe. There's even the token female, Jammer, who should have been given a more prominent role so it wouldn't be so obvious that this was a game about men only. Gears had some female characters, but they actually fought with you and were serious badasses such that the game didn't feel like it was just for boys about boys. I can't remember, but you might have played as a female at some point. No reason to make military shooters with only male characters. So I really wish that Killzone 2 had more of its own identity because the problem gets worse in 3.
Some great things about Killzone 2 were that the aiming and gunplay felt very good, even like a nod to older shooters. There's no auto-aim, which really tested my skills. There were some seriously difficult sequences. The one I remember most was the boss fight against Visari's head security guy, Radec. He can turn invisible and will *poof* appear right next to you with a knife and slice you up if you aren't always running. If you do run, he'll *poof* appear far away and open fire with a deadly machine gun. So you always have to be running, listening to where he's coming from, where he is, which weapon he has out, determine if you need to take cover from machine gun fire or charge him to shoot before he can stab you. Hit him and he *poof* disappears. The sequence leading up to Radec was so hard too. I loved it. I eventually figured out the best trick to killing Radec was just my gun choice, after figuring out how to move toward and away from him depending on his weapon and how he (dis)appeared and all that. Shotgun. Just use a shotgun. Don't get fancy!
There was another great boss fight early on against this flying missile launcher drone thing. The designs of these fights aren't very complex, but they force you to be almost perfect in your execution, otherwise you die. So with this sentry bot fight, you're on a small square rooftop with a pillar in the center. On either side (front and back) there are two energy canisters (that mysteriously "refill" or something when you shoot them). If you shoot a canister when the sentry is near, it gets shocked and you can shoot it with the missile launcher. You just repeat this 4 or 5 times and stay behind cover as best you can. The sentry fires machine guns and constantly swoops around the pillar forcing you to shuffle around it to hide. But every so often, it will strafe and launch 3 rockets. You will always take damage from this, but if you move your butt ASAP you will live. Then while the smoke is clouding the air from the rockets, you need to quickly determine where the sentry is and get back to the pillar to hide from the machine gun fire that has probably already begun again. It was a really difficult but enjoyable fight.
Unfortunately though, these are the only two boss fights I can think of. You never fight another sentry like that again, in Killzone 2 or 3. There are more, but they are either supposed to be ignored or they are killed way easily. And that's another big problem with Killzone 2. There is very little enemy variety. You ONLY fight Helghast troops with the occasional (easy version) sentry bot that just has machine guns. The troops all look more or less the same and just come with different guns. Oh, there's the flamethrower Helghast and there's the sniper Helghast and the submachine gun Helghast...Definitely needed more enemy variety.
The game also suffered from lack of gun variety. This one is mind-boggling. You can only have ONE gun at a time, plus your pistol. Come on now. And there aren't but a handful of guns in the game at all. There's like one version of each, sniper rifle, assault rifle, LMG, flamethrower, missile launcher, SMG...maybe one or two more. And frag grenades only. The cool thing that I guess speaks to the good level design and encounter design is that I never really felt bored of the enemies or the guns. I enjoyed fighting the whole time, even though it was limited, something I was able to think more about after the fact and into Killzone 3.
And that's about all I've got to say on that. I'll write a short entry for Killzone 3 soon, mostly just saying what I liked/didn't like that changed and say some more about more Gearing that went on in that game! Killzone 2 was really good!
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