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Jan 19th, 2013 at 00:42:44 - Halo Anniversary (360) |
So I've been playing the Halo Anniversary this week by 343 Industries, the company that took over the Halo franchise with Halo 4. Halo Anniversary is a re-make of the original Halo. I hear it's almost exactly the same, just with updated sounds and graphics. I wouldn't know because I'm one of the 5 people on Earth who never played Halo. I did play online some at friends' houses, but I never played the campaign because I never owned an Xbox. So this whole giant series, best Xbox games ever, popularized console FPS, yada yada, I know very little about. I have Halo 2, 3, and Reach (don't have 4 yet) ready and waiting on my shelf.
Halo Anniversary - cool game, fun enough, more review type stuff later. What I want to talk about though is how my mind is blown from all the *stuff* on this disc. I've never seen anything like Halo Anniversary in terms of tie-ins with other games, features, videos, information, community, fan service, etc. etc. I want to just describe what I see. I've spent like the last 2 hours going through menus and things.
When you boot Halo Anniversary, you get a normal looking start screen. Oh, I just booted it again. This time there's a video...maybe I skipped this every other time. Ok, starting over! When you boot Halo Anniversary, you get a video panning through some of the environments and playing some epic music (I really like the music in this game). Then you get the start menu:
Campaign - What you'd expect. Choose difficulty, "skulls," which are all kinds of extra bonuses you can add to make the game easier or harder like guns consume 2x ammo or your head explodes with confetti when you die (my favorite), very much like Bastion's system, and here you can have friends join in your game.
Halo: Reach Anniversary Multiplayer - This takes you to a separate multiplayer menu where you can do the typical Xbox Live matchmaking. There's another option called Firefight that appears to be something like the Last Stand/Horde/Survival modes in more recent games. You can do a custom-based game that says you and your party can create custom missions with maps, objectives and all kinds of things. There's something called Forge that is described as a real-time group map editing program. I guess you take some friends and all go edit a map together. Sounds interesting. The last option is Theater, where you can watch replays of your multiplayer matches.
Halo Waypoint - This is the insane one. Halo Waypoint is like everything Halo ever. You have to download this 200mb add-on, which is free. When you go to Halo Waypoint, here is what is on the front page:
(1) Barracks - ALL your Xbox Live friends and their Halo Anniversary data is here. It tells you who is online, shows all their equipment, multiplayer rank, you can compare friends, etc. etc. If you want to know anything about your friends playing the game, go to the Barracks.
(2) Waypoint Career - This one has a ton more options under it: (a) Halo:Reach Service Record - This also has a ton of stuff under it. You can see challenges that people have sent to you (don't know what those are), you can see daily and weekly objectives. Completing those gives you extra credits to purchase items and things. You can see and unlock some sort of special armor items. You can see all your multiplayer game history, including k/d rations, headshots, w/l records, everything broken down by weapon and map and any which thing you could possibly think of. And here you can compare friends even more detailed on things like accuracy, weapon choice, etc. It's crazy the level of detail you can get. Going back out to the Waypoint Career, the next thing is (b) Restricted Access, which is something to do with Halo 4. It's locked since I've never played Halo 4. (c) is Milestones, which is some badge that I don't know what it's for. (d) is Classified and locked, and looks like it's data archives you get for finding Terminals in-game. I'm not sure. I don't even know which game it's referring to, since this Waypoint seems to integrate Halo Anniversary, Reach and Halo 4. (e) is Awards for unlocking achievements, and (f) is achievements.
(3) Halo 4 Intel - This is everything you want to know about Halo 4. What's the story? What's the multiplayer like? Who are the characters? Etc. etc.
(4) Play Halo - Buy and play all the Halo games.
(5) Restricted Access - Also something for Halo 4 that I can't check out.
(6) What's New - A Halo news feed.
(7) Halo 4 - A ton more media about Halo 4 - trailers, gameplay, images, behind the scenes and making-of stuff, a live-action episodic digital series. Can you possibly want to know more about the game that isn't here?
(8) Spartan Ops Season 1 Trailer - Spartan Ops looks like a giant add-on of co-op missions and maps and other goodies that comes with Halo 4. Maybe like free DLC. And I think it's another episodic story.
(9) A trailer for another thing...oh, a movie.
(10) Store - buy Halo stuff.
(11) The Universe - A comprehensive guide to the Halo universe. All characters, factions, stories, ever.
(12) Community - This one is crazy. Under Spotlight, there are player's screenshots, videos, comic series, "toymation" shorts, some feature on how the Halo toymakers make toys, top Halo clips of the year...150 items here. Under Creations is player-made maps, videos, screenshots, behind the scenes of some of the live-action things and other stuff...81 things in this category. Then Events has 87 items worth of tournament coverage, event notices, videos, award ceremonies, interviews with teams and players, etc. etc. Finally something called Rooster Teeth looks like some featured Halo community. There are videos, commentaries, fails of the week, machinima, event hosting and more. 40 items under this one.
(13) And the last thing is Games, which is a guide specifically to the stories events, videos, speedruns, dev diaries, all kinds of stuff related to each Halo game.
Halo Waypoint: All the Halo.
Extras - And then somehow there is a separate Extras section, which has all the Terminals you've unlocked in Halo Anniversary, a Library which is a thing that actually uses the Kinect if you say "scan" on various objects in the game. It then gives you entries for those objects. Neat. Then the Credits.
I imagine Halo fans were *really* stoked about all the content here. I figure if you like Halo a lot, you need to buy Halo Anniversary. I wonder if Halo 4 has all this stuff too. It's something else. I would love it if series I really liked had things like this -- Gears of War, Final Fantasy, Assassin's Creed -- all just in the interface from the main menu. Very cool.
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Jan 13th, 2013 at 10:23:52 - Costume Quest (PC) |
In my final frenzy before heading back to work, I knocked out Costume Quest. I *love* this game. It's adorable, funny, clever, and all about Halloween and trick-or-treating and costumes. You play as either a male or female twin. The other one gets kidnapped by monsters, who have invaded your neighborhood to steal all the candy to bring back to the monster world to give to their big boss, who looks like a fat grim reaper. The game is an RPG, so you walk around exploring the neighborhood, trick-or-treating, fighting and completing quests. You progress through the main story by quests and trick-or-treating. You always have to trick-or-treat at all the houses/shops in each level. Sometimes a human answers the door and gives you candy and other times a monster answers and fights you. In the field, you collect candy, find costume parts to create costumes using blueprints that you find, and talk to NPCs. Candy is used to buy 'battle stamps,' which are like accessories that add combat abilities, increase defense or attack, that kind of thing. Each character can equip one. Each character also can equip one costume, and you can change costumes and battle stamps in the field whenever you want. Changing costumes for their various abilities reminded me of Stacking, accumulating dolls for their abilities. Speaking of, I found a fun Stacking easter egg in the DLC! Your main character can use the ability of the costume s/he is wearing, if it has one. The robot costume can zoom around the map with rocket boots. The knight can create a protective shield to get past obstacles. The pirate can use ziplines with his hook. And so on.
Each costume also has a different special ability in battle. Using the same examples, the robot fires a missile barrage, the knight casts a protective shield, and the pirate...well, I never fought with the pirate. Battles are very simple. You have a basic attack, a special attack which has to charge for a couple rounds, and a battle stamp ability if you have one equipped. You score criticals by successfully doing quicktime events, hitting the button that pops up or whatever. You can also defend the same way when enemies attack. Boss battles are straightforward and easy. The boss for the Grubbins on Ice DLC was the most fun and challenging of them all. The final boss for the main game was also relatively difficult, requiring me at least to run away and change costumes and battle stamps.
One complaint I have read about the game is that it is simplistic and the mechanics get stale. I think the length was just right, roughly 6 hours for the main game. Much longer and I may have gotten a bit tired of the fighting. However, the rest of the game remained fun. Each level (there are 3, plus 1 DLC) has some of the same quests (bobbing for apples, hide 'n seek, trading cards), but I don't think they got stale. They weren't time consuming or out-of-the-way or anything, and they always gave neat rewards. The level designs were great, pretty simple, never got lost, but big enough to explore and find most everything. I was a few costumes short by the end, missing a piece here and there, and I was missing only one trading card! It was probably just a random one you get in battle in level 2 that I didn't find. The trading cards are funny. They are all candy/food but with gross names and pictures that reminded me of Garbage Pail Kids. I remember Caramold with a picture of a moldy caramel bar, Cake Cod, which was a cake shaped like a cod, and Cuttin' Candy, which was cotton candy in the shape of a butcher's knife. I don't know why I remember all the C words first. There are like 50 cards and they all made me chuckle. The humor in the game is great. If you like Tim Schafer/Double Fine's brand of humor, you'll love this.
Amazing game. DLC ends on a cliffhanger. More, please. Play this!
*Edit* I played this using Steam Box. It works. It is awesome. Hooked up my laptop to the TV, plugged in my Xbox controller, and played Costume Quest on the TV like a console game. I have like 41 games with controller support. Steam knows exactly what they are doing. Now if I want to play a PC game, but I want that on-the-couch-in-front-of-a-big-TV experience, I can. Consoles the world over quiver in fear. I think the real benefit will be when modded games get controller support, if they don't already. Take Skyrim for instance. If you buy it on console, it's just the game and DLC. On PC, you have access to tons of mods. Same with Portal 2 and a ton of other games, which is why I play these on PC. But sometimes, I'm like man, I just want to play this on the couch. If I could get the mods and the couch, I would be very happy. Steam Box, makin' it happen.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jan 13th, 2013 at 19:22:51.
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Jan 13th, 2013 at 02:21:26 - Sanctum (PC) |
Sanctum is really something. I beat it today, and did the two free DLC maps I have. I re-read my first entry after the first level I played a month ago, which is interesting. I like seeing the assumptions I made based on one level. For example, I said that the freeze gun didn't appear to have much utility. How wrong I was! Because of the freeze gun, I beat the Yogscave level. I noted last time my concern that if you didn't load out with the "correct" guns and/or towers, you might be screwed and have to start over. Luckily I had the freeze gun on that level. It's funny because I never used the freeze gun the entire game, and then on Yogscave, the first DLC map I played after beating the game, I just tossed it in to try it, and it ended up saving me. If I hadn't had the freeze gun, I would indeed have been screwed and would have had to do all 30 waves over!
My #1 criticism of the game is that you can debilitate yourself due to a confluence of choices and end up having to start over, which sucks because the levels are *long.* There are 20-30 waves per level. The 30-wave levels take upwards of 90 minutes to complete. Realized you screwed up at the end? Spent another 30 minutes trying over and over to salvage it but can't? Start over, spend another 90 minutes getting back to where you died, and hope your game is better this round. There's no manual saving; only checkpoints every few rounds. There's only one save slot too. If you are stuck on a map and want to go try another one, you have to live with losing all your progress because it'll overwrite your save. I understand why this was all done on purpose. It makes your decisions matter and you're invested in your maze design. That's cool. But it can be brutal.
I played the game on Normal difficulty and beat all the levels first try except the last one, called Facility, and the Yogscave DLC. On Facility, I made it all the way to wave 30 and then got slammed. I'll intervene in this example to talk about how the game works some more because it is relevant. There are 2 categories of enemy, air and ground, each with a handful of types. Your towers can hit air and/or ground enemies. For example, gatling guns hit ground, anti-air hit air (duh), and scatter rays hit ground and air. You can also shoot both with your guns. Then certain towers work better or worse against different types of enemies. Anti-air guns shoot slow explosive missiles and are good against this slow floating hot air balloon looking enemy, but are not good against Dodgers, who are fast and zip from side to side. Gatling guns are good against Soakers, which take more damage the more they are hit, because they have a high fire rate, but are poor against Bobble Heads, who can only be hit in the head, and whose heads sway side to side, because their aim isn't great. In fact, I've found that only I can reliably kill Bobble Heads. All towers suck against them.
SO, as I said, I got slammed on wave 30 of Facility because I was overwhelmed on *both* ground and air. Not good! Usually there are two enemy types per wave, but this wave was the first time in the game there were 3 types at once -- 2 air types and the grandaddy of the ground types, the Big Walker. Big Walkers are huge lumbering things that take insane amounts of damage. The first try, I killed the Big Walker, but a ton of air enemies made it to the core, which was already at only 20%. So it died twice over. Turns out that my major weakness was not having sufficient air defense, and unfortunately nothing I could do could salvage the level. I spent all my money and sold all useless towers at the end and put it all into air defense, and still a ton of them got through. Some of my attempts the Big Walker even got through. I eventually admitted defeat and started over, using some help from the internet. I found a handy blank grid someone had made of the Facility, copied it into Paint to play with, used someone else's strategy to guide my maze, and then more or less followed their tower placement. Their maze design was way better than mine! And I also learned how to use some of the towers better at that point. I put that knowledge to work in the DLC maps I played next.
I *almost* had the same near-miss on Yogscave. It also has 30 waves, and I was absolutely kicking ass until wave 30. There was a (surprise) boss! Yogscave, by the way, is a special DLC featuring silly commentary while you play by the two British guys who do Yogscast, some videogame casting show. It was pretty amusing. Anyway, this boss was a monster. He was basically a Big Walker with a bajillion more HP and he fired homing missiles. He launched missiles, then turned his head around to look at you. He had a big funny frowny face. When the missiles hit you, you launch into the air. I got stuck off the map several times because of it. Really annoying ability. His weak spot (some enemies have weak spots and take extra damage if you shoot them there) was his butt. I'd follow him with my trigger finger mashing left mouse, assault rifle rounds flashing. But his homing missiles were terrible and constantly sent me flying. He made it to the core every time with less than 15% HP, so I wasn't doing too bad. I just had to figure out a way to quit being hit so much by his homing missiles. After studying their arc and trying to find a cause/effect between him looking at me/away from me and firing missiles, I developed a movement strategy. I was able to avoid most of the missiles by doing this circular forward strafing thing. It was pretty awkward, but it allowed me to stay close enough to him. I lost him around corners sometimes. I still wasn't killing him though, so I then tried to maximize my tower damage. I leveled up key towers, built a ton more Amplifiers (enemies take +x% damage when walking on them), and *still* couldn't quite manage. He was getting to the core with a sliver of HP. Maybe I could have gotten him with more practice circle-strafing. But instead, I started trying to freeze him with my freeze gun in deathtrap areas where I had a lot of level 5-6 towers and Amplifiers. That seemed to be a good idea, and I finally thought to level up my freeze gun, which I'd never done before. Turns out a maxed out freeze gun slows enemies by 40% (level 1 is 25%) and the alt fire freezes them in place for over 6 (level 1 is 2) seconds. That was the trick. He died near the end of the maze and still had a couple turns to make before the core. Victory, with time to spare!
As you can see, Sanctum can be intense. I did find the difficulty a tad off balance because of these two crazy wave 30s. Sure, it's the last wave of the game/DLC, but when you're killing the level for 29 waves, and then the 30th kills you, it's jarring. The other free DLC was a Christmas themed level with 20 waves, was fun (you can shoot Santa out of the sky), and had a good difficulty. It was one of the two levels in the whole game with a set path. All the others you have to build your own maze. There are two DLC map packs available on Steam with 7 more maps total. I put them on my wishlist and will snag them whenever they are 75% off. There is co-op online multiplayer as well, and there are a handful of people playing. I should try it out sometime! Also, there is a Sanctum 2 in the works!
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Jan 13th, 2013 at 01:06:27 - Syberia (PC) |
Ok, got another plane game. It's an older point-and-click adventure game called Syberia. I played until I got stuck and have confirmed that a trackpad is excellent. So now I'm setting it aside as well and will stop starting potential airplane games. It took me about 45 minutes before getting stuck.
Syberia is intriguing. It begins with a short cut scene of your character arriving to a sad little town in the French Alps. She stops to allow a funeral procession, led by an automaton drummer, to pass. A storm outside gets stronger, and she heads for the hotel to check in. She was sent to this town on behalf of her law firm to oversee the sale of a mechanical toy factory, world-renowned for its automatons, to a client, another toy factory. Unfortunately the funeral she witnessed was that of the factory owner, so she has to do some exploring to figure out how to continue on with the sale of the factory.
I got stuck when I was able to explore the town and needed to find a notary. In typical adventure game fashion, for me at least, I clicked on every thing but the correct thing. The hotel clerk kept telling me that I'd know the notary's house when I saw it. But I didn't know the notary's house. There were two places I couldn't get to with automatons on the door/gate that I needed to fiddle with. One of them I needed to give something and pull a lever so it would inspect what I gave it. I didn't think I had anything useful to give -- a cell phone, two faxes, and a couple cogs. Turns out that is the notary's house and I had to give it one of the faxes, and the notary examines the fax through the eyes of the automaton, and then lets me inside. Who knew...I'm not sure if I was supposed to recognize the automaton's eyewear as some notary tool or what, but I spent 15 minutes walking all over town looking for something to put in that automaton's hand.
Anyway, the game is more than interesting enough for me to keep going. I think I will get most of the puzzles and solutions. I really like the look and sound of the game. It's sort of steampunk, but there's this surreal vibe going on. Something about the automatons is unnerving. And the death at the beginning, and this isolated mountain town, and this attempted takeover of the toy factory...there's a mystery here. But yeah, I'm going to put it on hold, bump it ahead of Avadon as my current travel game, and wait to (hopefully) enjoy it.
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