The Simpsons Arcade game has arrived suddenly on Xbox Live Arcade! It comes to PSN on Tuesday. It’s still pretty good, if you like arcade brawlers. The most impressive thing is how well the assets still hold up. There’s some well-done art here, and the compression on the digital sound samples is great considering the age of the game. This is totally worth the 10 bucks it costs even if the game is a little mindless.
4 out of 5
This demo was good enough to make me go out and buy this game, and also the original FF XIII.
A little backstory: I didn’t get through FF XIII two years ago. Kind of crazy that it released two years ago. Anyway, I was really excited about it, played it for about 10 hours and…moved on to other things. It wasn’t that I hated the game, it felt more like it wasn’t for me. It’s certainly the most polarizing thing that Square has ever put out. It’s oddly paced, incredibly well-produced, and really linear. It was a drastic departure from the other Final Fantasy games, but I always felt like I should go back to it some day. Say what you will about Square’s games, but they are always significant.
Final Fantasy XIII-2 had a weird act to follow then. It’s Square’s second silly direct sequel to a Final Fantasy game. (I love their numbering scheme for this, by the way, but then I enjoy dumb titles. I’m really looking forward to playing Dynasty Warriors NEXT). It is made from leftover assets that were created during the five year development on Final Fantasy XIII. That’s right, they spent so much money and time crafting that huge RPG that they actually had enough stuff to put together into another huge RPG. It tries to fix many of the complaints that people had about the first game, and, at least from the demo, it’s pretty interesting.
This game retains the lavish combat system and production values from the original title. It adds a crazy time travel plot taking place around the events of the first game, and removes nearly all of the characters. Towns are back, NPCs are once again prominent, there’s a Moogle that says “Kupo!” all of the time, and there’s a mysterious lady dressed in a chocobo outfit. In short, it’s a traditional Final Fantasy game slammed into the framework of XIII’s reboot, and it’s an interesting hybrid. The demo provides about an hour of gameplay, and I really enjoyed it, even if I didn’t understand the story at all since the demo starts in the second chapter of the main game. You should check this demo out if you’re curious about this game. It’s got stuff that should appease both fans of the old series and fans of XIII. It also has some awesome quick time events.
I look forward to writing more about the full game soon!
Well, so much for Starbreeze.
I recently played the new demo of Starbreeze’s forever-in-development Syndicate game, and I didn’t enjoy it. It’s a demo of the co-op mode, but I elected to play it by myself instead of with random internet people. The game is a first-person shooter re-imagining of the PC classic. I will say that it keeps Starbreeze’s signature weighty combat intact. The shooting feels pretty good, and the weapon sounds are satisfying.
Where the game falls apart is in absolutely everything else. The UI text is comically small, even in HD on a nice large monitor. This problem is further complicated by a fuzzy grain effect that’s supposed to look like you’re viewing things through some kind of radio interference or something. While this has looked cool in other games, because this filter makes the already-small text blurry, it’s ludicrous. It seems like no one ever bothered to look at the interface for this game.
The enemy AI is so laid back that I was able to do just fine in this 4 player co-op scenario all by myself. A few times I got kill assists…even though there were no other players for me to assist. I would shoot a dude, and then one of the other AI guys would somehow screw up and kill the guy I was shooting, thereby giving me the points for the assist. This happened multiple times during my 20-or-so minutes with the game.
As a last hurrah for the Starbreeze engine before they switch to Unreal Engine 3, this game looks bland. Previous Starbreeze games like the Riddick titles and The Darkness made effective use of contrast, shaders, and lighting effects to have a unique and incredibly detailed look. This game has a rather flat, gray aesthetic that lacks personality. Every time your character completes something in this co-op mode, they yell it out. “I killed a guy!” “I’m reloading!” etc. This is supposed to be a tactical, cyberpunk, infiltration mission sort of game. It seems to me that yelling out your accomplishments on the battlefield is a really stupid thing to do.
I know that many people left Starbreeze during this project, and I know that it had a long and troubled development, but this game just feels unfinished. This demo completely unsold me on the game. It’s possible that the campaign mode will be better, but it seems like co-op is the focus of the project and if this the game putting its best foot forward…well…it’s not pretty. Try this demo before you buy this game, you might save yourself sixty dollars.
After that, go buy the original game on gog.com instead. Much better value proposition.
I almost forgot to post today! Here’s what I’ve got on deck for this week:
New Release Highlights
Games are going to start coming out again this week! We’ve got Soulcalibur V and…Final Fantasy XIII-2. Well hey, it’s a start!
Rig N Roll Game Plus Part 2
At some point this week I’ll finally do commentary for that second Rig N Roll video I recorded. I know you’re waiting in suspense.
World of Warcraft: The First 20 Levels
I’m a WoW Noob! I signed up for World of Warcraft recently, and I’ve leveled my old character from 2007 to level 20. Finally. So I’ll be talking about that experience.
All this and more random thoughts, previews, and reviews whenever I finish a game. February should be pretty exciting between games coming out again and new hardware like the Playstation Vita. Can’t wait!
Dead Space is available now for iOS and Android devices. I played around with it for a few minutes on a Kindle Fire. Here are some random impressions:
- Mechanics-wise, the game is a pretty straight copy of Dead Space and Dead Space 2. This is cool in that the game offers all the action of those larger console titles, but bad because of how many controls are required. The controls are cumbersome, at best. You’ll have to constantly lift your hands and move them to different parts of the screen to get at everything you’ll have to touch. The pace of the game is a little too fast at times, and so the lack of buttons is really felt.
- The graphics look solid, with nice lighting and textures. When they move though, the animations are of noticeably lower quality than in the other Dead Space games. The main character’s run is particularly humorous.
- The story is surprisingly well connected to the events of Dead Space 2. You’ll get more out of it if you’ve played that game, or plan on playing that game after this one.
The controls really bring this down. It tries to mimic a dual-stick approach where you use each thumb as a stick, but the rest of the controls often require lifting your thumbs and touching different areas of the screen. There’s too much going on here for a mobile game, and it’d be better suited to a device with buttons like the 3DS or the Vita. But then, those platforms are beefy enough that they’d be better off porting one of the “real” games rather than this almost-there facsimile. It’s a cool achievement, but I’m not having all that much fun playing it.
I bought Dead Space 2 in a Steam sale recently and I’m finally playing through it, and guess what, it’s still probably the best action/horror game ever made. I’d say that the only games that come close are the original Dead Space, Resident Evil 5, and Bioshock 2.
And yet, it didn’t make my GOTY list for 2011. Playing through it again now one year after its release, I have no idea why I shafted it. Maybe it’s because it came out so early in the year. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t really into the multiplayer component, and thus if I had included it on the list it wouldn’t have been for the “complete package” which is always important to me. I don’t know. All I’m saying is, if you’ve never played Dead Space before, you really should.
In addition to this little bit of me fondly remembering Dead Space 2, I’ll be checking out last year’s mobile Dead Space game soon. That’s apparently one of the best mobile platform games out there, and of course I missed out on it until now. I hear it’s really good so I have high hopes!
Hmmmmm. I recently played through Alpha Prime, a sci-fi first person shooter developed by the now-defunct Black Element Studios in the Czech Republic. I bought this game randomly at Best Buy years ago for 20 bucks and it has sat in my backlog ever since. It’s now 5 bucks on Steam, and it’s probably worth it…it depends on how important Eastern Bloc tech is to you and how much frustration you can endure.
The best thing about this game is its competent engine. On a technical level, it’s a very good copy of an idTech 4 game, like Doom 3 or Quake IV. The characters look good, the whole thing moves well, and it’s got nice lighting and smoke effects. The story is also surprisingly fun, offering a script that weirdly benefits from a slipshod translation into English. Sure, it’s sort of boilerplate sci-fi fare, and sure, the main female lead looks like a creepy Liv Tyler clone, but the ending is GREAT and the story kept me playing the game.
Unfortunately, the actual game design doesn’t live up to the writing or the technology. This is an old-school shooter, meaning that ammo is limited, health doesn’t recharge, and everyone can kill you…FAST. It’s possible to die in around one second in every single combat encounter. The developers put out a balance patch in 2009 that helps a little with this, but man is this game tough and not in a good way. You’ll have no chance to react as the enemies just slaughter you, their AI good enough to pelt you with hundreds of bullets as soon as you come into visual range. I had no choice but to slog my way through quick-saving after every encounter. After enduring a little over half the game this way, I turned on invulnerability through the console and had a much better time. I don’t mind challenge in games, but the word challenge implies that there’s a solution. Here, it’s often down to dumb luck and/or having the reflexes of a machine. Word of advice, if you decide to play this, play it on easy or cheat and you’ll have a much better time.
So. A decent engine, a goofy story, and some horrible design…not all that great of an outcome. The game lasts around 5 hours, but it’s also only 5 bucks now, so that’s a pretty good deal really. If nothing else, it made me check out more of Black Element’s history. Before this game, they made a cool-looking fantasy action adventure called Shade: Wrath of Angels on this same engine. I played the demo of that and it seems cool. After Alpha Prime and its “Balance Patch,” Black Element was swallowed up by Bohemia Interactive, the dudes what make the ArmA games. It’s a shame that this engine will never see the light of day again in the hands of better designers. Even from the demo, Shade seems like the one of their two games to play, though Alpha Prime might be a good gateway for some into the weird world of tiny Russian/Eastern Bloc/Euro game development. I personally never want to play it again, it’s just too difficult for me.
2 out of 5
They finally fixed this demo, so now I can say some things about it! It’s still good! It looks really nice on PC and the load times are much shorter than on consoles. The controls however, are a little iffy. The interface really seems to have been designed for a gamepad, so if you’ve got one of those you’re good to go. If not, the mouse and keyboard are serviceable, but using the Darkness powers and navigating the menus is a bit clunkier than on a gamepad.
That’s…that’s all I’ve got really. This is still a pleasant surprise, you should try it out on Steam right now!
Well…this just crashes immediately when I try to run it. My impressions follow.
You can get the recent demo for the Darkness II on Steam right now. Go do it if you like shooters or liked the first one! I’ll have impressions of the demo and how it compares to the console version later today. I also re-downloaded Star Trek Online, and soon I’ll have an article about my experiences with that game.
I’m also playing Fate of Atlantis for a little backlog challenge I’m running on my private Steam group…and I’m not liking it at all. I know I know, this makes me a horrible person.