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Aug 9th, 2011 at 22:16:21 - Red Faction: Guerrilla (PC) |
RF:G is like a lesser Just Cause 2. It's smaller in scale and scope, got a far less interesting story, less interesting weapons, and less interesting physics. The one thing Red Faction is best as doing is allowing you to (more) realistically destroy things. You can destroy everything, eeeeverything, and it is fun doing it. Buildings crumble differently every time. You can shoot rockets at them, plant explosives strategically on the support beams, or simply demolish them with your sledgehammer. I've never blown up a building, but I imagine this is what it's like.
At the very beginning of the game, I had a huge grin plastered on my face as I realized I could literally smash everything to bits. I went to town on a wall. I went to town on a car. I went to town on a building, and even tried to go to town on other Red Faction members (morale drops, they attack you, and eventual game over; bad idea!) After obliterating everything I saw for an hour, I got real bored and started doing more missions. But missions generally also involve blowing things up, so after another couple hours I was getting bored of the missions. Then I just started trying to do story missions to move it along, but the story is real thin and it also involves...blowing stuff up.
I think my goal here is to figure out why blowing stuff up in Red Faction, even though it's more realistic and you get an awesome sledgehammer, isn't as fun as blowing stuff up in Just Cause 2. A couple things do come directly to mind:
1) JC2 goes for over-the-top-ness instead of realism. This allows you to feel like a badass in JC2, but not so much in RF:G. I do feel like a badass in RF:G when it's just me and the buildings, but as soon as enemies come along, I'm a weakling. In JC2, you had this grappling hook as a weapon/tool, could parachute everywhere, steal any vehicle, scale buildings, and so on. That grand sense of scale and those superhero/superspy type feats aren't here.
2) Enemies are like unrelenting fire ants/killer bees in RF:G. There is a heat meter like in all these open-world action games where the more damage you cause, the more enemy attention you attract. In RF:G, that bar rises so fast, and if you so much as touch an enemy signpost, it escalates from green (no threat) to yellow. And since you can't initiate missions unless it's green, this becomes quickly annoying. More annoying is that the only reliable way to decrease the heat meter is to drive all the way back to a safehouse. You can't just hide and reduce the meter. So even the simplest little action turns into a massive firefight that I either die from or I run screaming back to a safehouse.
3) Enemies are hard and I don't have the firepower to stop them. They swarm so much in this game, I am always quickly flanked, cover destroyed, and I don't have the weapons and ammo to deal with them. Basically once the heat meter gets to orange, I have to leave the area or else I can't finish destroying my target or whatever I'm doing because I have to put all attention on fighting or running to live. I spent the better part of an hour last night trying to get these last 16 Control points, which involved blowing up just one medium priority building. It got really frustrating. Then when I finally achieved that, I went on to the final mission in the zone, and it starts with the heat meter on red, and I've been unable to finish so far simply because there are so many enemies.
4) Story in RF:G is so boring and characters are totally flat. Compare this to JC2, which on the most basic level has the same story, to topple a regime, but does it with so much more style. Characters have interesting personalities and relationships, they're voiced better, they're funnier, they're more involved in what you have to do, etc. etc. It really does make a difference.
And just to describe a bit, the idea of the game is the Earth Defense Force (EDF) are the brutal overseers on Mars, terraformed it, and now rule it with an iron fist. You're part of a miner uprising to liberate 6 sectors from EDF control. There's also a mysterious third faction of bandits who you don't really know who they are or where they come from, but they're hostile to everyone. They remind me of the Mad Max universe, but on Mars. So in each sector, there is a Morale meter and Control meter. Morale is the morale of the regular oppressed population of the sector. You raise morale by completing missions, destroying propaganda, etc. The higher morale, the more ammo you find in weapon caches and the more likely random civilians are to grab a gun and run around helping you fight. This second aspect is entirely useless, as there are so many more enemies that they make quick work of the civilian. And when the civilian dies, you get -1 morale. So really, every time a civilian joins up, I roll my eyes, because it means I'm going to get -1 morale since they can't stay alive. Useless is a good word.
The Control meter is like JC2's destruction meter sort of. Some buildings are marked red, and others are marked specifically as low, medium, or high priority targets. Blowing these up causes the EDF to lose some Control in the sector. The catch here is that you have to have 0 Control in the sector before you can begin the final mission in each sector. Again, just like JC2 where you have to cause certain amounts of destruction to unlock missions. Except in JC2 missions are more varied and fun, and there are about 10x more of them.
My favorite mission type here is the demolitions one. They're kind of like little puzzles where you have to blow up some structure with a specific amount and configuration of weapons within a specific time frame. So, destroy this building with 8 remote charges and 10 barrels of hydrogen gas in 3 minutes. They started off real easy, but have gotten more difficult, like this one I really enjoyed learning how to do. There were 12 barrels of hydrogen and 10 remote charges. The target building was way down a cliff, but there were four big pipes leading from the ledge down to the building. So obviously you need to toss the barrels down the pipes, they roll out next to the building and then you blow them up. First though you need to attach the remote charges to the barrels. Now, two of the pipes are close by. The other two are out of range of the mission area (stay out of the mission area for like 7 seconds and fail the mission), but I realized after some time that I absolutely had to figure out a way to toss barrels down the far pipes. I was only blowing up 2 sides of the building at best using the nearby pipes. So after some trial and error I found a way to aim and hurl barrels down one of the far pipes without running the mission area timer out. The last hurdle was that, even though I'd figured this out, the building still wasn't collapsing. I had an aha moment and decided to attach half the charges, toss those barrels down and destroy them, and then do like a 'round 2' and attach the other half and toss the rest of the barrels, so that they'd roll farther now that some walls had been brought down. I did it, success! That one was nice and thoughtful, and I hope there are more like it.
That's all I've got here. I'm about halfway through the game (3/6 sectors liberated). I'll probably bump the difficulty down to easy from normal and see if that helps with the swarming, and press on. I thought about quitting, but it is fun as long as the heat isn't too high. Also, some of the multiplayer looks interesting, so I'd like to try that out too. Or I could just toss my hands up and say I'd just play more JC2 for a better version of the same thing. But who knows, maybe it gets better. Oh, and there are mechs in RF:G. The anticipation of busting through walls and smashing cars with a mech really is a motivating factor in this decision.
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Aug 7th, 2011 at 08:42:01 - Magicka (PC) |
Not sure how much I like this game. It's odd, that's for sure. Magicka is an action RPG, but unique in several ways. First of all, it's a parody of the genre. The NPCs speak out loud in gibberish. Doors everywhere are locked, with accompanying comments when you click, "Locked, locked, locked!" "Why are all the doors always locked?!" "It's open! Oh wait..locked." The map and names of things are over-the-top fantasy or silly nonsense, like there's a named forest and then "That Other Forest." I thought all this was very funny when I first started playing, but it gets...not old...just not that funny. There are also numerous Star Wars, James Bond, and other references throughout.
So the premise is just generic fantasy goblins and orcs invading, being led by someone smarter and more sinister and mysterious behind the lines. Usual stuff. You're a wizard and you have 8 magic spells. Each one is assigned to a key, QWERASDF. You have 5 slots in which to input the spells to cast. So you can do QQQQQ (5 of whatever Q is, Water I think). Or you can mix n match in mostly logical ways, like Fire + Earth (FD) shoots a fireball. Then there are special spells like Haste or Revive that have longer, more elaborate chains. Basically doing like QQQQQ just increases range or power. Each element does different stuff and works in conjunction or against another. So Fire and Ice are opposites. If you soak someone with Water, then use Electricity, they take extra damage. It's a pretty cool system and takes a little getting used to. Also, if you hold Shift + whatever button, it does an AoE. And if you click Mouse 3, is casts whatever on yourself.
The best part about this game is that you get an M60 assault rifle a few chapters in.
So, the spell casting is fun, but I end up just running circles and spamming things. My favorite thing to do is to plant mines (Arcane + Shield; SE) and watch enemies get launched into the air when they explode. Despite the game being sort of fun, it's also sort of annoying because of all this running circles and spamming things. Also, it's nice that the game is making fun of RPGs, but it makes the dull story feel even more pointless. And since the combat doesn't vary a whole lot, and there is no loot or money or anything, I'm really not that motivated to keep playing. It's clever, but just not clever enough to keep me into it.
So I told P about it, since he bought us copies to try, and I'm gonna stop and wait on him to catch up, and then we can try to play some co-op together and see if it's a bit more fun, or involved. There should be some good teamwork to be had. We have to play on the gaming rigs though because for whatever reason, the game destroys all other computers. Slowdowns, framerate issues, mouse lag, really bad. And it's just some indie game! Granted it's pretty, but it should not take gaming rigs to run a little indie title. Anyway, changing status to played occasionally and looking forward to trying co-op sometime.
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Aug 6th, 2011 at 01:27:41 - The Ball (PC) |
I just finished The Ball, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It reminds me of Portal, Marble Madness and Indiana Jones movies. This one is odd in that reviews weren't that great (68 on Metacritic), but I found it to be quite unique and compelling. It was short (6.5 hours according to Steam), and I never got bored. There were a few letdowns (I'm looking at you, boss battles), and the story was cryptic and didn't make too much sense. You unlock story mostly through finding secrets. If you don't find the secrets, of which I got maybe 1/3, you don't get story, and the story you do get just doesn't flow.
My favorite thing about The Ball was...the ball. It looked, felt, and sounded heavy, metal, massive. I loved rolling it around, using it to solve puzzles, and smashing enemies with it. The enemy-smashing could be slightly awkward because they'd tend to run just at the edge of the ball so you couldn't roll them over sometimes. I'd have to back up and shoot it at them, but that combat worked pretty well. It is strange combat, very straightforward until the end, when you start having to set it on fire, cover it with land mines, or electrify it, to kill enemies and solve puzzles. I like the ball more than Portal's companion cube. The ball is your life in this game. Sometimes you get separated from it by necessity to solve puzzles, and it feels like you're helpless because it's the only way you can solve puzzles and fight enemies! I imagine painting a face on it and giving it hair like Wilson in Castaway. It really becomes a companion.
The puzzles generally weren't too difficult, yet I felt they were clever. The variety was good, and the game regularly, but more in the last few levels, added twists to the puzzles. My favorite puzzle was the first time I got to magnetize the ball, giving it like a low-gravity field that, if you stand in, you can jump and float really high. I used it then to get across a big field of lava with sparse platforms. Using the low-grav field, I could jump long distances from platform to platform. My least favorite puzzle was this ridiculous platforming part where you had to launch the ball up into the air to knock a cube off a tall pedestal. It was just an annoyingly difficult feat to perform.
The bosses, like I said, were letdowns, but they looked so cool! The giant gorilla in particular I was anticipating. But all bosses are of the 'hit them 3 times and they die' variety. I killed the zombie gorilla in about a minute once I figured out how to do it. Exact same thing with the sand worms, and then there was the pterodactyl that you don't even fight. You just avoid its fiery eggs for 100 meters. The best enemies were what I would consider mini bosses, even though they were harder than the bosses proper. Actually, the gorilla and pterodactyl were the only real bosses because the sand worms and the lizardmen (the hard mini bosses) reappeared over and over. Then there was the mysterious shaman guy who led me into traps a couple times, but I never got to fight him.
That's really about all. The game was creepier than I thought it would be. I jumped a few times when zombies screamed and came charging at me from around corners. The environment is awesome, inside this churning volcano. I took a lot of screen shots. And at the end, the ball is not what you think it is...
The Ball was part of Portal 2's pre-release party, so there's an extra Portal level that I played a little bit of. The underground volcano opens up into a secret Aperture Science lab with a fully functional GlaDOS. The first thing you do is use the ball to get a companion cube, but I didn't play much further. I'll fire it up and play that level next time, then start on something else.
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Jul 31st, 2011 at 10:39:38 - Defense Grid: The Awakening (PC) |
I'm going to put this one down (bam!). Best tower defense I've ever played, though unsurprising since I've only played free online ones, and Plants vs. Zombies, which has a different enough presentation for me to not lump them too close together. I didn't beat the game. I have one level left. I got stuck for hours on the third-to-last level, which was very open-ended with its space. Basically, the linear levels are easier; the spacious levels are harder. Maybe this is where the game gets its name, Defense Grid, because the later levels are just that, giant scary grids. Instead of the aliens taking their little designed route, they are given a huge amount of space/number of paths to run, and you have to figure out where to block them. They are almost totally re-routable in the later levels. There was a lot of trial and error going on, a lot of studying the map and tracing my finger on the monitor, trying to figure out optimal choke points, temporal tower placements, etc.
DG is a lot of fun, but it gets borderline tedious. I finally decided to stop playing after seeing the last level, which is a, yes, giant scary multi-story grid with two entry/exit points. I just don't even want to try, it's so intimidating. I know it will be fun to mess around with, but I also know it will take for damn ever, and I will die a million times, and I'd rather play something else instead. I did, out of curiosity, look at the extra map packs I got, and they are the same: crazy huge grid-like levels with tons of different spots for choke points and strategy. The levels are just too much.
I would enjoy more creative, less open levels, such as my favorite level in the entire game, the bonus Portal 2 promo level. This one also features GlaDOS. You're at the Aperture Science Lab and GlaDOS is running a test to see how well you would fare in preventing human annihilation at the hands of invading aliens. The level had some unique design that was missing in the whole rest of the game, and no, sadly, it didn't use portals, nor did I get a 'portal tower.' I'd attach a screenshot if I could, but basically enemies entered from one of two spots: the top of the map, where they ran past a 3x3 block of towers, and then over a bridge with some random towers next to it, and then through a door, BEHIND the wall (where you couldn't shoot them) and down a ramp, then back out into the open, along a conveyor belt lined with towers to the cores, then out the exit, which was past another 3x3 or 4x4 or something bunch of towers that I never had to build.
The second entry point was new. Masses of enemies ran out from the left side of the screen underneath the conveyor belt to a second core depot, and then ran back across the floor to a second exit where they came from. The first time the mass came, I had no idea it was coming because the entry/exit point there didn't show up on my tactical overlay. There was a chessboard setup of towers on the floor they ran across, so I immediately constructed a central temporal and surrounding concussion towers, then lined the edges with gun and laser turrets. It was a lot of fun killing the giant swarms, and I bet if I played again that level would be super easy. As is, I beat it first try, but with only 1 core left!
So yeah, that's Defense Grid. Fun game. I might come back to it in the future if I ever feel like punishing myself.
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