Gaming

I thought I'd just list a few things I liked and disliked about Gears of War 3. Warning: SPOILERS!

LIKED: The series finally spent more time outdoors than indoors or underground, and we got to see some color. I liked that. The near-monochromatic color scheme worked well in introducing the game world back in the first game, but as things moved faster and became more crowded, it became monotonous.

DISLIKED: GoW3 is only marginally less set-piece happy than GoW2 was, with plenty of sequences that turn the experience from a third-person shooter into a rail shooter.

LIKED: I liked how we got to see how the actions of two separate squads came together to result in the defeat of the game's first boss enemy, the Leviathan.

DISLIKED: I disliked how jarring the transition was, going from Marcus and Dom defending the ship, to Baird and Cole looking for groceries. Ultimately, though, the gameplay for the second team was more enjoyable.

Portal 2 feels very different from the first game. The first game seemed a lot like what it was: a new idea that came in from the outside-- outside Valve's usual Half-Life universe, and outside the usual thinking. Portal 2 feels a lot like that idea brought into the Half-Life universe, and expanded-- which is a good thing, I think.

I really enjoyed the backstory of Aperture Science and the comparison to the Black Mesa mythos that Half-Life is steeped in. The origin story for GlaDOS was terrific, and it came as a huge surprise to me that this came about organically, almost accidentally-- it seemed almost as if it had to have been planned from the very start, it worked so well.

Some have bemoaned the addition of other gameplay mechanics, namely the speed, bounce, and portal gels, as it takes center stage ahead of the portal gun itself, especially during the old test areas of Aperture. Some I know complained that the puzzles themselves were more limiting, allowing for one solution and one solution only, rather than multiple possibilities, as in some of the first game's puzzles.

Ok, here it is... your weekly recap of gaming: 6 days of gaming made me pretty happy for some reason. A big holler to Narcogen for honoring me with what little time I know is available. We added 200 points of gamerscore which ain't too shabby. Getting 10 achievements can do that to you. I was there. I saw it! Oh, and Narcogen seems obsessed with role playing games lately... You can tell because Fallout: New Vegas was the favorite last week. He played it on 6 of the days.

I could go on and on with the stats, but that is enough.

LA Noire just oozes atmosphere. It's got a frame story (soldiers returning to the US from WWII and adjusting to civilian life) that I found interesting, especially where it tightly integrates into the gameplay, namely in the Vice and Arson desks.

The expanded Black Dahlia plotline of the Homicide desk I found less satisfying, in no small part due to the fact that you're nearly always dealing with wrongly-accused suspects. Your character knows this, since the serial killer theory is one he supports, even when his boss and partner don't.

It's also where the wrinkles in the interrogation system are the worst. Picking out Truth is usually the easiest, but Doubt and Lie are problematic. Sometimes Doubt means "I know you're lying, but can't prove it"-- and you might not be able to prove it because it can't be proven, or because you didn't find the one correct piece of evidence (or did find it, but didn't identify it properly).

It is that time of the week. I got your weekly recap right here: If you are an Xbox, you might be jealous that Narcogen showed up to game 5 days this last week. Happy happy joy joy! It was productive... Gamerscore went up 190 points so I am happy. Yay for 16 achievements! w00t!

I was feeling a little bored last week and persuaded Narcogen to try a new game: The Baconing. It wasn't as cool as I thought it would be. Oh, and Narcogen seems obsessed with role playing games lately... You can tell because DeathSpank: T.O.V. was the favorite last week. He played it on 4 of the days.

And that's it... short and sweet, just like my power cord.

When I picked up Alice: Madness Returns, I was generally well disposed towards the title. I had enjoyed the previous game, so I expected to enjoy it.

With Dead Space 2, I was a bit more leery. I had skipped the first installment due to lack of interest, and picked up the game only on the suggestion of a friend. It took me a while to warm to the title, due in part to some severe reservations I have about its very traditional design (monster closets) and ways in which some encounters are deliberately unfair and limit the player's options in ways that most of the game's encounters don't.

Hunted: The Demon's Forge took me until the end of the first playthrough to really appreciate what it was trying to do, and even so, parts of the game are very rough. Like the previous two games mentioned, it's built on the Unreal engine by Epic Software; but unlike the previous two titles, it displays a slavish mimicry of Epic's own flagship Unreal engine franchise, Gears of War, that makes it difficult to perceive and enjoy some of the title's unique features. In the end, a game that I found flawed and frustrating in many parts completely ambushed me with a moral choice gameplay element that had been expected in Bioshock, but was so poorly implemented as to be pointless, here, polished to a shine that is present nowhere else in the game.Warning: Spoilers Ahead!

Another week, another recap... and you love me for it: If you are an Xbox, you might be jealous that Narcogen showed up to game 5 days this last week. Happy happy joy joy! We added 495 points of gamerscore which ain't too shabby. Getting 22 achievements can do that to you. I was there. I saw it! Also, I think Narcogen's favorite game last week was Hunted: Demon's Forge. He played it on 4 of the days.

Another week finished... staring down the barrel of another one. Check back to find out what happens!

A friend of mine happened to mention how much he enjoyed Dead Space 2, and although I had skipped the first installment, I decided to take a look at the franchise's new game. There's a lot to like here, and an interesting mix of old and new elements borrowed from a lot of different games, and a lot of different sources.

Warning: spoilers ahead! This is not intended as a "find out enough to see if you want to buy it" sort of article, but a detailed look at a lot of parts of the game's story and design, and it WILL spoil the ending for you if you haven't played the game.

Derivative Space

This may be an unfair criticism, since one of my favorite franchises, Halo, draws heavily on concepts from other works: Aliens, Ringworld, Iain M. Banks' Culture novels, and several others. A broad-stroke summary of Dead Space's story would end up reading a lot like a mismash of ideas from other films. A strange, inscrutable artifact is found that holds vast and terrible power-- much like the Monolith in 2001, like the Halo array in the Halo series, and like the Beacon in Mass Effect. The artifact, which is called the Marker, sends out a signal that makes ordinary people go insane, and makes "smart" people see symbols, at least one of the side effects of which seems to be imparting the knowledge and abilities necessary to build Markers, as well as a drive to take the steps necessary to use the Marker to achieve Convergence, which appears to be a unification of all humanity into a single being, much like Instrumentality in the Evangelion universe. The Marker is revered as a holy artifact by a religion called Unitology, a thinly-veiled doppleganger for Scientology, and they are one of the groups struggling for control over the Marker and those exposed to its signal. They seem to be actively working towards Convergence, while others attempting to exert influence over the Marker and those exposed to it-- namely Earth's government-- seem to be working towards something else.

The supposed immense power of the Marker explains why our protagonist, Isaac "I See What You Did There" Clarke is so important. In the first game, the mining ship Ishimura, with Clarke's significant other on board, found a Marker on a planet called Aegis VII. The Marker's signal caused people to transform into Necromorphs-- hideously distorted, murderously violent zombies with a wide variety of super powers and biological attacks. In other words, space zombies. There are a lot of similarities between Dead Space and Left 4 Dead in their pantheon of opponents: large, powerful creatures with devestating melee attacks, creatures that attack from range with fluids, little creatures that hop on your back until you throw them off. The Marker, I guess, is Dead Space's version of the AI Director, choosing what combinations of necromorphs to send after the player.

Confession time; I had a soft spot for American McGee's Alice, a 3D platformer I played back on my PowerBook back in the post-Myth, pre-Halo era. Bungie had just abandoned the Mac gaming scene and entered the embrace fo Microsoft, in order to influence and promote the Xbox platform, and there was not a lot that I could play on the limited Mac hardware I owned. I did not want to build a Windows rig just for gaming.

There's also the appeal of the (superficially, at least) literary theme. So there's no doubt that nostalgia played a role in my decision to get Alice: Madness Returns for the Xbox 360, a sequel to that game that also included a code to download a port of the original.

Less Than Zero Punctuation

Yahtzee makes a number of excellent points in his Zero Punctuation review of the new game, but I thought I'd follow up on just a few and perhaps put in a few good words for a game that I've had a good deal of fun playing in the past couple of weeks.

Narcogen was a no-show yesterday... I ended up hanging out, collecting some dust and feeling sorry for myself. Speaking of dust, I could use a rub down. A clean Xbox is a happy Xbox. Oh, and Narcogen, just so you know, we lost the streak badge. 14 days is where it stops this time around. LAME!