Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls is a turn based fantasy role-playing game based on the classic PC favorite Wizardry. Developed by Acquire and published in the US by Xseed games, Labyrinth of Lost Souls is the first in the all new Wizardry Renaissance series available exclusively on Playstation Network for the Playstation 3. The Renaissance title may be a bit misleading though as this new game stays very close to its old school Wizardry roots. Labyrinth’s classic flavor should please players who came up playing the series in the 80’s and early 90’s, but could make this new game a bit inaccessible to new gamers. Of course those with an open mind might just find this game a retro styled gem.

Players begin the game just as in previous Wizardry titles by picking a fantasy race for their character such as Elf, Gnome, or standard Human. Each race begins with a fixed set of base stats that can be raised or lowered by applying bonus points. This is the first time Labyrinth shows its archaic RPG roots, because the amount bonus points is randomly generated  each time a new character is created. Back in the day, this random point generation was supposed to emulate the rolling of dice to generate stats in table-top RPGs such as Dungeons and Dragons. Players who wanted better stats often just restarted the character creation process in order to “re-roll” their character. It’s a tactic that works in this game as well, which is to say that if you want the highest stats possible all you have to do it continually re-roll. If the whole re-rolling process seems a bit silly and unnecessary to modern players then welcome to RPG gaming circa 1982 kids.

Labyrinths of Lost Souls old school design tendencies don’t end with character creation, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing depending on the player. The developers clearly had nostalgia in mind while creating the game, which incorporates several game-play mechanics that are rarely if ever present in modern games of any type. Things like having to pay to identify items and treasure picked up in dungeons before they can be used or even sold might seem frustrating and senseless to some gamers, while instilling a sense of wonder and anticipation in others. The absolute and complete lack of any type of tutorial or in-game instruction could be seen as a roadblock to players unfamiliar with older Wizardry games, then again it could encourage players to experiment with the game as they might have back in the days of gaming yore.

Game-play is fairly straight forward in Labyrinth of Lost Souls, and this is where the game will resonate with all gamers. Newly minted characters arrive in the town of Aitox which is easily navigated by menus. Aitox is a convenient location for new adventurers as there are a few dungeons just outside. There’s a guild in town where you can pick up quests that will send you into the dungeons to kill monsters, collect items, and even make deliveries. These fetch-style quests will seem very familiar to both current and veteran RPG fans, as will the very basic core RPG mechanics such as stat points and equipment management that now permeate every genre of today’s game landscape.

The dungeons in Labyrinth are seen from a first person perspective, and as your party moves forward each step they take represents one square of the map grid. The movement and perspective is same as the popular handheld RPG series Etrian Odyssey on Nintendo DS, which was clearly inspired by Wizardry. The Dungeons are fun to explore and are loaded with treasure chests, secret doors, teleporters, and of course monsters. The turn-based combat is intuitive and easy to master, and the computer remembers the selections from the previous turn so that simple battles can be fast forwarded through. That’s not to say that the game is easy, though it’s doesn’t have nearly the harrowing difficulty seen in many previous Wizardry incarnations.

One aspect of Labyrinth of Lost Souls that is strangely schizophrenic is the aesthetics. While the dungeons and monsters could easily be mistaken for a western developed game, the character designs are clearly Japanese in origin. The music and ambient sounds are also fairly western in style and unobtrusive, but the scant character voices that are peppered throughout the game are the original Japanese and sometimes sound like they’re straight out of an anime. The graphics and sounds aren’t going to win this game any awards, but they’re strangely charming and fit the games tone.

Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s a fun blast from the past for fans of the original Wizardry series.  It can also serve as a perfect introduction for new players that are curious about Wizardry, but don’t want the hassle of trying to get 25 year old games to run on their modern PCs. Though some players might find parts of Labyrinth too old-fashioned, others could very well realize that they’ve missed a very important part of gaming history and open themselves up to a whole new world of adventure.

Deja Vu has ruined every single detective game that has ever been made. Nothing could live up to the legend Theodore “Ace” Harding and his world of intrigue and deception. Everyone kept telling me that L.A. Noire will change my mind about Deja Vu being the only good detective game in existence. Time to put on my stylish Brooks Brothers three-piece suit and fedora and jump back into the seedy world of dicks….hmm, that doesn’t sound as good as I thought.

L.A. Noire has “wow” factor when it comes to presentation. From the opening screens, menus, even in game with the detective notebook that you use to collect clues and info about the case you are working on. Everything Team Bondi did to make the world of L.A. Noire immersive was right on point. There were times when playing L.A. Noire, I forgot it was a game and for a split second I swear that Last Man Standing was on my screen. Ok, that was false but I really, really wanted it to be Bruce Willis on the screen. Even though my hopes of having Bruce Willis in L.A. Noire (maybe a sequel?) were all for naught, you still get to see a plethora of stars in game. I am terrible with names so don’t ask me to mention them here but you will know them when you see them. That’s how good the facial animation is in L.A. Noire. Besides creeping me out at times, the facial animations are so well done that it benefits the world L.A. Noire is setting for you.

With so much presentation, it’s a shame that the story falls apart near the end. L.A. Noire does a great job at making you believe that Cole Phelps is a ‘by the books’ cop until near half way through the game where it comes off the rails a bit. Even with the flashbacks to Phelps’ time in WWII, there is still not enough there to really make the change in the story believable. Usually, I play games late at night and being a nice guy, I use a headset so I can crank the volume loud. I noticed when I played L.A. Noire with the headset on, the audio seemed off to me. It sounded like someone was pushing buttons on a soundboard in queue with the game. Even some of the banter back and forth from characters in the game have different audio levels. I had to take of the headset to get immersed in the game again but still had that nagging feeling in the back of my brain of someone hitting buttons on the soundboard, sort of like this.

Gameplay is sort of a mixed bag for me. In the beginning, it was fun to search the crime scenes for clues, interrogating suspects and doing chases down back alleys trying to run down fleeing suspects. After about halfway through the game, the repetitive nature of doing the same thing for that long wore thin on my patience. Crime scenes became a walk in the park due to how L.A. Noire alerts you with a sound cue and controller feedback if you are near something you can look at. There is an option to turn of these hints but then you are left mashing the button walking everywhere in the crime scene. The interrogation should be fun but it seems like a hit or miss when it comes to figuring out if they are lying telling the truth by looking at their expressions. The evidence that they want you to use to prove if they are lying is either so blatantly obvious or it’s so minute, it makes no sense. You can use intuition points that you earn when you level up to help you pick the right answer but it seemed to not help me most of the times. It almost made the interrogations feel like I was playing ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’ with being able to narrow down what is the correct line of questioning as well as having the option to see the percentage of what people picked at the part of the game that I am in.

I have always said I love a good story in a game regardless if the rest of the game is terrible. L.A. Noire has a great story that falls apart in the end but by the time it falls apart, you are already heavily invested and are compelled to see it to the end. There are faults with the mechanics of the game as well, though not enough to turn me away from it. Hopefully Team Bondi will get another chance to fix what was wrong with L.A. Noire in a similar game down the road.

I am not one for British humor. Could never figure out what the reason behind it all is, just never grabbed me like it does others. When finding out that Telltale was releasing Hector: Badge Of Carnage for the PC and Mac, I looked up some info on the game. Of course it was riddled with British humor and slang. Putting aside my dislike for British humor, I loaded up the first episode, We Negotiate With Terrorists.

The setup is that a hostage crisis breaks out in Clappers Wreake and “the fat arse of the law” Detective Inspector Hector,  becomes the only hope for justice. Now, Hector has to make a hard decision: carry out a terrorist’s outlandish demands, or watch as his fellow officers are taken down one by one.

Right away I was enjoying the art style that the developers Straandlooper Animation used. It fits right in with the rest of the art style that most Telltale games are done in. Very cartoonish and colorful. With any game of this type, you basically look for items around the area you are in and use them to get you past the obsticles that are presented in front of you. Although my dislike for British humor, the crude nature of the dialouge was at times quite funny. Things like Hector asking a “Human Relations” worker “Who’s your daddy?” to only have her respond with who her actual daddy is made me giggle a little. There are plenty of lines in We Negotiate With Terrorists that caught me off guard with how crude yet humorous they were. Maybe I need to rethink this whole British humor thing.

Besides the humor and dialogue, what makes a good point & click adventure game is the puzzles. Make them to easy and people get bored. Make them too hard and people get pissed and quit. We Negotiate With Terrorists keeps the frustration levels to a minimum. I had to look at the hint system a couple of times since I was at a loss for what I had to do next. I got so use to Telltale Games tricking me with some of their other point & click adventure games that I overanalyzed everything when it was much simpler than I thought. Even with the puzzles being a little on the easy side, I imagine if you haven’t played this yet since it was out on the iPhone last year, you will have to use the hint system at least once. The hint system is pretty straight forward and reads like a FAQ, with a bit of humor mixed in. It berates you for using the hint system and as you scroll to the bottom, it has everything listed in a neat and organized fashion for you to get to the hint you need. If you want to get the answers for all the puzzles, you can, which is quite unfortunate if you decide to do such a thing.

The audio for some of the voice actors sounded like it was recorded in a really low bitrate and was hard to listen to at times. Not sure if its just me or the press build I am playing but it is really easy to tell when the audio sounds off. Whoever was the voice of Hector will forever be known as the cartoon version of Jason Stathom in my mind. It was all I kept picturing in my head when Hector would talk. Maybe I just think every Brit sounds like Jason Stathom. Kinda makes me want to watch The Italian Job now.

With all games of this type, We Negotiate With Terrorists length will be determined by how good you are at puzzle solving. It took me maybe 3 hours to complete and with the next two episodes, Senseless Acts of Justice and Beyond Resonable Doom, not being released until sometime this fall, I am not sure people will remember to come back and play the rest of the episodes. Hector: Episode 1 – We Negotiate With Terrorists is not a bad game, just not sure it will leave a big enough impression in peoples minds with that much of a wait in between episodes.

This is going to be a rough one. The problem here is the best part of Portal 2 is the story. It truly is the prime focus on why you would want to buy it. So to sit here and point out as much about the story that I really liked as possible would probably just shaft whoever reads this. So I’m going to have to choose my words wisely and edit the crap out of this to ensure maximum non-spoiler-age. So lets see what GlaDOS has been up to this whole time.

Return to the Rabbit Hole

I played the original Portal a little late in the game. Luckily, it was one of the few games that was able to live up to the hype that was built up for me during its life in the market. I think I picked it up about a year after release and still enjoyed playing it. The puzzles weren’t necessarily hard at all. I never found myself stumped, but that was me. I heard it wasn’t much harder in Portal 2, and it really wasn’t. The eventual addition of new puzzle elements livened things up a little, but were normalized when I realized the almost mechanical and repeatable functions to them. Still though, had they not been there and if I was left with just the gun and some boxes, I wouldn’t have given Valve as much credit for pushing the FPS platform puzzler genre.

In terms of the game though, it flowed really well. One thing I tend to look out for with Valve now and days is the concept of visuals dominating the storyline. What visual elements were used? How did these play into the overall story? Did the color palettes add to or subtract from this feeling? This all started after going through the Team Fortress 2 levels and listening to all the production commentary. How much emphasis was put into the subtle-yet-not details of each level. I brought that mindset to Portal 2 due to my own personal branding of Valve’s creation process, and I felt it was a great start. You really do notice a lot more when taking these things into account. The whole sequence of events felt actively better when understanding how they looked and why.  Watching the testing facilities “regenerate” as GlaDOS brought them all back on line taking the lighting and foliage away from the back-to-nature feel they had and bring them to the cold and grey offices’ of science. Walking through what felt like a whole other era when you came up on the old Aperture Labs. Seeing the chaos over take the testing grounds. All these things made the game way more immersive, and the characters used to flesh out the whole thing were spot on with what the generally whimsical and still ominous world of Aperture needed.

Lets Meet the Cast

In the first game you are introduced to GlaDOS, yourself and whoever is going crazy and writing messages all over the facility’s underbelly. They added a few more names to that roster, and thankfully none of them were just filler. They all had a great amount of thought behind them. GlaDOS is back in all her insanity. The new guiding voice of Cave Johnson takes you on the tour of three different situations that Aperture went through in his life time. You get to see the evolution of the whole lab as it goes from stagnant to thriving. The comic voice of AI unit Wheatley breaking up what could have been more of the same without him. I don’t know how much further I want to go into this though. The story is driven strongly by the characters, and to bring up too much more could reveal major plot twists that were strewn about the story. Though I feel many of them were easy to call early for me, it made them no less brilliant. Definitely a story worthy of the cult following behind the Portal IP. It has the ability to be approached with fresh eyes, but you will most likely miss out on the “nostalgia” moments if you do, and if your thinking about getting both, just do it. The benefit to playing these two games in order is better than going back afterwards.

This is Still a Game

Story is all well and good, but past that this is, in fact, a game and should be held under that microscope as well. Currently I’ve completed both single and multiplayer all the way through. This has clocked me in at about 9 hours total for both. The single player alone took no more than 5 hours for me. In terms of gameplay I usually take offense to that. For $50 I’d at least expect the standard 8 hour core storyline. But with Portal 2 I honestly don’t know where I stand on this issue. On one hand it felt short, but on the other there was a lot of content stuffed into those hours. On one hand the platforming seemed dumbed down (for me this was due to the focus on cross platform), but on the other hand the additions made to the puzzle side of things refreshed the IP as opposed to rehashing it. Its just a tug-o-war as to whether or not I can definitively say if I felt the decisions made in this regard had merit. It kind of makes this a hard sell to me, though the cross-platform function seems to work wonders, and for that alone this could mean great things in the future in terms of inter-platform projects. I feel I will be in turmoil over this for a while as to whether or not I feel the story was enough to genuinely carry me through the lack of everything else.

Side Thoughts

Its always great to see Valve put out some more work, but in today’s gaming landscape there were still some things that left me wondering. In particular, the load times. Though I believe that there was some kind of grand scheme reason behind the need for this game to load as often as it does, I can’t help but take issue with it. Especially early on when I find myself tearing through the easier puzzles, it makes me cringe when I’m faced with a load screen every five minutes. That is really my biggest problem with Portal 2. It might be better if I knew why but until then I’ll just have to stay annoyed at every awful load screen breaking up what was otherwise a good experience.

I never thought that fighting games should be put on portable devices. I’m not saying that because I don’t think it can be done, it’s more that they would never be comfortable to play on such a small device. The other big reason being playing opponents online is still an issue on portable devices due to companies not properly having the infrastructure in place to handle online play. Let’s face it, playing a fighting game is so much better when playing against a human opponent. Just getting a 3DS in my grubby little hands I wanted to see if Capcom could deliver that console experience in a portable package with Super Street Fighter IV 3DS.

Booting up SSFIV 3DS, I was hoping that the issues I had with the game would be washed away this time around. I was surprised that everything in the layout design of SSFIV 3DS felt just like the console versions. I decided to jump into arcade mode first since i didn’t setup the wireless connection on my 3DS yet to play online. Before starting the arcade mode, I was presented the same options you get in the console version. Difficulty level, match length, rounds, bonus rounds, etc were all there. However, a new option called “Dynamic View” was listed and immediately I remembered my time at PAX East 2011 playing SSFIV 3DS and was about to turn this over the shoulder view off but that wouldn’t be fair to reviewing this game. So I decided to give this another shot. Maybe the show floor was not the ideal place to play in this mode since it was difficult to angle the system the way I wanted to.

Picking my favorite spamming character Ken Masters, I jumped into my first match against Guile. I ended up losing, badly. Not wanting to blame it on the dynamic view, I proceeded to do a rematch using Ken. Again, I was met with a losing effort. I did better this time around but still lost. Doing this 5 more times I was able to eek out a victory but realized that dynamic view is not for me. I was having too difficult of a time judging distance between the opponent and me to accurately jumping over the projectiles. I totally understand why dynamic view is in SSF4IV 3DS and it does make the 3D in this game shine more but for a game that relies on timing, this mode has a steep learning curve for me.

Switching to the standard side view mode made me feel more at home. The 3D was still prominent with certain things like the health bars and special meters in the foreground while the fighting happened in the background. Making it through the arcade mode was made a little easier with the lite control scheme that is new in this version of SSFIV. In the lite control scheme, there are four buttons on the bottom screen that can be set to whatever you would like them to be. The defaults are two special moves that use the hard attack and two buttons assigned to either the super attack or ultra attack for that character. Just for fun, I tried only using the buttons on the bottom screen to make it through the arcade mode. Not surprisingly I did it with ease. Now you may think you can spam them consistently against the A.I. but it seems Capcom made the A.I. at least a little smart against that so you will have to use a some sort of strategy when using just the bottom screen buttons. There is a pro mode that doesn’t turn off the bottom screen buttons but instead it only lets you select normal moves to be assigned to one of the four buttons. I found the pro mode to be more fun since it let me play as close the console version as possible.

Having my fill of the arcade mode I wanted to dive into the online play of SSFIV 3DS since that is going to be the main draw of this title. Setting up a match was dead simple and it wasn’t long until I found a match. No need to worry about people spamming lite mode controls in online play since you can filter out what control schemes you want to face online. Thank you Capcom for this. I did try lite control mode in online play and I won every single match using Balrog by trapping my opponents in the corner using his dash punch special. Yes, I felt dirty doing it. Pro control mode matches were more of what I was use to on the consoles, getting my ass handed to me by perfectly executed combos. Not sure how some of these people are doing complex combos on the 3DS since the circle pad is near impossible for me to use and the d-pad is a little small to be precise. I am not sure that the shortcut inputs from the console versions were added to the 3DS version since that would make sense. I also ran into trouble with the 3D getting in the way of my matches. Since you have to hold the 3DS at a certain angle for the 3D effect to work, having the 3DS moving while trying to pull of complex moves in SSFIV 3DS is distracting to the eyes. Not enough to throw your game off but enough to annoy you at times.

If you happen to find yourself in an area with a plethora of people with a 3DS and SSFIV 3DS, your 3DS will auto battle that person if they have Street Pass enabled in the game. Little figurines that you can purchase with points you earn in the game as well as use play coins to convert into points do the fighting for you behind the scenes. You pick out a team of five figurines to be your street pass team. Living in an area that seems to have no one with a 3DS sucks for testing this feature out. I went to get Subway today and a Gamestop was right next door to the place. I hoped for at least one street pass battle but alas, no one was found. Other little things that are found in SSFIV 3DS is achievements. You don’t get anything for them that I see but it’s nice to see that Capcom tried to replicate the console experience for their game as close as possible.

Have I told you how sexy this game looks? It’s hard for me to tell that this is a handheld game. Some people will say that it looks on par with the PSP and I would have to agree, if it was out on the PSP. It’s more than likely due to the small screen but mt brain could barely tell the difference between the graphics on the 3DS version versus the console version. I am sure if the 3DS version had a 10 inch screen we would see that is was inferior but it doesn’t, so to me it’s respectably the same. Having some issues with SSFIV 3DS still didn’t make me regret getting a 3DS. I love being able to play a near perfect representation of a great Capcomfighting game on the go, not to mention the non-laggy online gameplay that I experienced. If you have a 3DS, more than likely you have this game already since there is not that much out there yet. If you are still waiting for that game that will push you over the edge, don’t forget to pick up SSFIV 3DS at the checkout when you get a 3DS.

Kimerex here. Closing day. Closing thoughts. Closing remarks. Closing time. PAX East 2011. The myth. The legend. The nerd mecca. Our promised land. The first thing that jumps to mind about the experience as a whole is one simple statement. On behalf of both of us here at the Herocast… we’re sorry. We are sorry to all the people we didn’t get to meet at PAX. We are sorry to all the people who couldn’t make it. We are sorry to all the panels set up that we simply couldn’t make due to prior engagements. We are sorry to all the nerds that, as of yet, still don’t know about PAX. For all of this, we are truly sorry. This is, without a doubt, something that needs to be experienced by all. The definition of “replay value” in convention form. I have so many memories that I will carry with me now from this, and I can say for certain that Andyb0y will probably speak of this weekend for years to come. The convention that never existed, but should have. I see now what that truly means.

But still, the thing is I understand that concept now better than I ever did, but I didn’t even take part in all of PAX East. I’m a table top gamer. I’m a competition proned gamer. I’m a collector of all things odd and intriguing. I’m an artist and a writer. I have a deeply ingrained love for music in games. PAX brings this all to the table, and leaves no real easy way to have it all, but dammit I will have to try. Even if it takes years to be a real part of it all. Right now however, I feel my first step of recovery upon returning to the dull mess that is my home life will have to be going into a month long coma to restore my very being back to a manageable state. The need to just disappear and come down from the euphoric and adrenaline fueled high that PAX has elevated me to is so strong, but I have to get right back to it. Reality. The true enemy of us all. But I will carry it with me. The glimmer that will allow me to walk through hell and high water, knowing what I am is so much bigger than just me.

That Damnable Thing Called Media

So what did we do today. What did role did the Herocast play in this historic day. The semi-nerd worker bees. We walked into the center thinking we were going to nerd out and spend our time taking pictures of cool things, collecting random free stuff and even buying more nerd memorabilia.  Two quick appointments and we’re off to be what we, at heart, truly are. The only problem with that plan was that one appointment is with man from a team of talented modders who are on my short list of heroes, and the second was with a company making a game that will most likely have me in rehab later in life. Damn you fate.

First up, Ed Stern of Splash Damage.  Lead Writer on their current project. Their first original IP. Our first victim in our attempt to have more candid conversations with developers, Nathan Davis of Obsidian being our “trial run”. Hopefully we did well, though he seemed happy to have talked with us. Hopefully the fan boy in me didn’t do anything stupid.  It was great though. It was amazing to hear how Splash Damage has been handling the transition into Bethesda, how wonderful Bethesda has been to them and how truly happy they seem to be working on a title they can truly call their own. After giving Ed Stern a run down of my history with Splash Damage, it seemed to have broken the ice in the best way both Andyb0y and I could have possibly hoped for. To here about all the prep work they put in to making this a legitimate venture to produce Brink with the utmost attention to being a viable triple-A IP. Their drive to find that delicate balance between casual and hardcore players needs. Putting a great amount of focus on personalizing the experience for each and every player that decides to take the leap.

Through all of this, the one thing that struck me was seeing the gamers behind the devs coming through in decisions made with Brink. They weren’t really decisions, more instinct. When asked about a moment that stood out for Ed, he told us about a moment at PAX where he was thanked by a quadriplegic gamer for allowing the player to customize the controls both completely and during the game. This truly stood out for him and seemed, to me at least, to be an almost instinctive gamer behavior to want to have more control in your own gaming experience coming through even though, from what it sounded like, that Splash Damage didn’t actively think about putting that feature in as something new. Just something they felt had no reason not being there. He said he was astounded to find out that this type of control wasn’t in most games out today.

Honestly, this interview gave me hope for the idea of open air conversation. When asked about the transfer from making great multiplayer games from pre-established games to becoming their own entity, it almost felt as if we were transported away from the raging storm of the PAX East video game floor to a quite corner in the world. Names were dropped. References were made comparing how Splash Damage was growing into this incredible new entity to one of them becoming a father. The only thing I could think of after walking out of the little room with chairs in it were all the people with yellow media badges that this man talked to who only asked the canned questions, and how much those people missed out on. Its one thing to greatly anticipate a game and go for all the cold hard facts about it, but to also find a new sense of respect for those making it… truly extraordinary. This was already a day one purchase for me. Its going to be so hard to not just insta-stamp 10/10 on it after the great conversation we had. Thank you again, Ed Stern, for being such a great sport. It sound like you, and everyone from Splash Damage have put together and incredible team of people. Good luck on your, hopefully, many projects to come.

Maybe now you see why, even on our nerd off, me and Andyb0y were stuck doing work again. *sigh. Damn you gaming world for being way to interesting to us.

We quickly found ourselves running around, taking snap shots of things we may have overlooked in the hurricane that was day 1 and 2. Then came Firefall. What I thought was going to be icing on the PAX East cake. A cake which had turned out to consist entirely of icing. I swear PAX East… if you gave me convention diabetes….

So Firefall. An intriguing anomaly in our country’s upcoming MMO heritage. Free to play. A massive title with several MMO heavy hitters in its utility belt, and still free to play. I thought Arena Net was an astonishing group for what they did to the MMO business model for the states, but Red 5 is pulling out all the stops and ushering us in to what is already established as the working norm all over the world as far as I can tell. And they are not trying to do this with a 2d side scroller. Their not just putting out a fps match making system. No. A full world game. PVE. PVP. Dynamic Events. Gear. Leveling. Persistence. And did I mention all of this for free?

Item shop based, yes I know. We in the circle of MMOnaughts have been burned before by this term. And yes, I too am wary of anything involving both the words item and shop in any MMO at this point. It sounded like Red 5 is sticking to this mantra though, under the assumption that we as gamers will step up and pay for it in return for them giving us fun. New content, fast response to player issues. Everything a pay 2 play comes with. Almost mockingly good. And I’m going to tell all gamers reading this right now. We need to take this leap. We need to break away from the idea that monthly fees are the only option. It will open the floor for so much more to come out in the future. I believe this stigma can be broken.

I am sad to report, however, that me and Andyb0y screwed up. We did not, at all ask our dev about any fun stories from Red 5. Only until well after our talk did I realize our great mistake. This does not mean we are not open for hearing from them either through email or over the phone at any time in the future, but we screwed up. Plain and simple. What we did find out were basic gap filling answers I look for in “skill” based games. From what we were able to get, the core structure of Firefall is a basic equation. Levels=gear. Gear=more modules. Modules=tweaks to play style. Play style=Skill. I have to agree. Its so simple yet so profound, and as long as something doesn’t derail this concept, I see great things coming out of Red 5. Sadly, considering what I’ve seen from out MMO community right now in the world, I almost feel that the conversation amongst us has changed so much that something new might not work as well as I am hoping. And that is far to sad. Best of luck to Red 5, and beware the all consuming trolls. They will try and gobble up Firefall, amazing concepts and all.

Overload

Nerd power… ACTIVATE! With what short time we had left to us before needing to get back and get all this down before our brains had synchronized aneurysms, Andyb0y and I rushed around to everything we could think of. It was like living a montage in a few very short hours. Watching as two metal band members had a sack race across the main hall. Being able to touch the arcade games of our history in the ACAM exhibit.  Watching as young and old came together to enjoy systems from the Dreamcast and back. Seeing droves of people take part in table top games, both established and new to the scene. So much we didn’t get to be a part of. And to top it all off, we were unable to make any panels on our schedule. 🙁

With that we await the appointed time for our train to take us away from this fantasy world we took part in, tucked away in Boston. Until next we meet, and don’t worry. We’ll be bringing friends.

And better equipment. Sorry for the blurry pictures.

PAX East 2011….The Journey Begins

PRELUDE

Upon arrival to the train station, Kimerex and I were getting pumped for our first conference where we hold the power of Media capacity. That’s right, we are press for this event, scary huh? Not to bore you with too much details, the train ride was horrible. It was unbearably hot in our area. Not sure what the hell was going on but it took until about an hour away from Boston before they opened up some doors to let the air in. Pokemon Black & White barely kept us sane for the six and a half hour ride. Perhaps driving to Boston next year will be better for us.

Once in town, we were immediately greeted with the city flavor of a cabbie yelling at a woman that she didn’t pay him and led to her screaming obscenities at really high decibels. Ahh Boston. A quick cab ride to our hotel we were already contemplating what to eat. Since we had no idea what to get, we roamed the streets until we settled on a really nice sushi bar. With our bellies satisfied we trekked back to our room and began to formulate a plan of attack for day one of PAX East. Since this is our first time doing any of this as well as going in as a two man team, we had no clue as how to proceed. So we said “fuck it” and decided to go into day one with the knowledge that we had only one meeting to go to (sadly Dead Island was cancelled do to a complication on their end) and we would spend the time before and after said meeting with Valve to see Portal 2 to actually network. Getting contact info was our main goal for the first day and a really sound idea, seeing as though we could use all the contacts we can get.

DAY ONE

Mornings to gamers are not kind at all. After getting about five hours of sleep, we left the room groggy and scuttled down to the front lobby where thankfully there was a shuttle provided by the hotel to the convention center. I underestimated just how many PAX attendees were at our hotel, that was five miles away from the event, and the shuttle filled up quickly, leaving us with the option of a cab or waiting another hour for the shuttle to come back. Cab it is. PAX East started off on a bad note. The way the communication was handled between staff and attendees was horrific. After waiting in line for about twenty minutes, we realized that we were in the wrong line for our passes. Wonderful. So Kimerex and I went to our proper line for media passes and proceeded to wait another thirty minutes. To make matters worse, when we go to the front of the line, they had Kimerex under Geekscape but I was under Handheld Heroes. Not sure who to blame on this one but I felt odd wearing my Geekscape shirt and having a media badge that said Handheld Heroes on it. When we asked for lanyards for our badges, we were told to go to the queue area to get them. Ok, easy enough. So after walking around for what seemed an hour, we finally found the area we were suppose to get our lanyards. Not sure why we didn’t have them when we got our badges (I see a whole pile by your leg registration guy!) and the mixed up answers we were getting from the staff on where this mystery location was led to even more frustration. Not a good start at all.

Thankfully once we got to the floor, everything seemed to fly by in mere seconds. You can really get swept away in the musings of PAX East and forget how long it’s been since you got something to eat. First on our list in the half baked plan we had was to survey the exhibit floor to see where we need to go on day two as well as get contact info for meetings we can attempt to make before the weekend is up. Getting around the show floor was daunting in that everything felt condensed in a small square of geeks that I felt like cattle being herded. Wanting to take pictures or video was impossible with the amount of people and the fact that we are just two guys covering this whole thing made it worse. Lack of proper team and equipment meant that pictures and video were going to be light if existent at all. While making our way through the sea of geeks to network our site, one place in particular caught my eye. Skull Girls was being shown off and I immediately went over to get a hands on. Skull Girls is a 2D fighter developed by the small team over at Autumn Games that will be out in the Summer for XBLA and PSN. Having played my fair share of fighting games, I liked how this game felt. The motions were fluid in the animation for the two fighters we had access to for the demo. It felt a little harder to pull of combos but that is expected from a ten minute demo. I am sure given a little more time to learn the controls I could have beat Kimerex. There is a 1v1 mode as well as 2v2. We tried out the 2v2 mode and Kimerex noticed something on how character swap happens. Likening it to Marvel Vs Capcom 2, Kimerex swapped his character out right as I was hitting him and he was invulnerable and I was hit with his character that was swapped in. Hopefully this is something that can be fixed in the final build. Other than that, I am looking forward to playing Skull Girls and possibly trying to get the fighting game crowd in my area to give it a shot.

Right next to the first Autumn Games’ demo was a title that I really had no info on, Jimmy Johnson’s : Anything That Has An Engine. The easiest way to describe this game is its a kart racer in the style of Mario Kart with a multitude of weird karts. A lot of karts, I know. I picked the farmer on a lawn mower as my character to dominate the demo. Surprisingly, the game controlled really well. Steering was tight aand the basic mechanics of turbo, weapons such as missiles and mines, and drifting were also done very well. I also like how the weapons are matched to what type of character you are playing. Since I picked the farmer, my mines were bags full of leaves. One of the developers mentioned to me that the rubber banding that plagues most kart racers or racing games in general is not prevalent in JJATHAE (Honestly I am not typing that all out again. What ever happened to short and to the point game titles?). What seems to be in it’s place is shortcuts throughout the track that only open up to people in the back of the pack. For a game not being on my radar, I am actually going to give JJATHAE a closer look as we come up on the release.

After the whoring session Kimerex and I did to as many booths as possible, we proceeded to our first official meeting with Valve for Portal 2. Now at this time is when we find out how it sucks to be media. After finally getting someones attention, they proceeded to tell us that we were not on their list. NOOOOOOOOOO! Only when I showed the gentleman the email confirming our appointment did we get ushered in with some other people that were also media. I felt sorry for a brief second for all the people in line waiting for this “demo” as we walked to the front of the line. Of course that feeling passed very quickly since I am seeing what I thought at the time was hands on demo of Portal 2. Instead of the hands on demo that Kimerex and I wanted, we got to watch a never before scene from the single player part of Portal 2. Now, what we saw was pretty impressive. The video showed what looks to be the opening scene to Portal 2 introducing Wheatly. A lot of comedy was coming through with the writing of the script for Wheatly and I really liked that. It made the game, to me, more immersed into the games universe versus the sterile environment that was in Portal. Portal 2 seems more lively and has that charm that I look for in games to keep me wanting more. After that short video, we were shown a video on the two new components added to Portal 2 that has been seen already. Blue gel that you can bounce off of and orange gel that, when you make contact with it, you slide. This part of the video is also where they show of the President of Apeture Science, Cave Johnson, who is voiced by J.K. Simmons. Not being prepared, we were sort of ambushed into an interview after the “demo”. Figuring we would indulge, we asked some basic question that I am sure most, if not all, media people have asked to death at this point so I will only bring up the one thing that seemed like it wasn’t a canned response from the guy we were “interviewing”. The PS3 version of Portal 2 will have the Steam app built into the game so that cross platform gaming with your PC brethren is made easier. I was hoping for a Steam app that would be installed separate from the game but maybe it will be that way in the future.

After our meeting with Valve, we decided to run the floor one more time before heading off to the hotel to write up our thoughts for the day. We did manage to stop at the Capcom booth, which for some strange reason was in a far corner of the exhibition floor and not very visual. Super Street Fighter 4 on the 3DS was there and I made a dash towards one of the stations. Now this is my first experience with the Nintendo 3DS so I was delighted to finally see what this 3DS was all about. About two minutes into SSF4 3D, I absolutely had to turn off 3D. Not only were my eyes hurting, but the exact angle you have to hold the 3DS to get the full effect of 3D was unbearable. It felt like I was staring at cardboard cutouts. What made matters worse is the angle they have you fighting in now. It’s almost an over the shoulder view that throws any kind of timing you may have had in any previous 2D fighting games out of whack. If I had any interest at all for the 3DS and SSF4 3D, it was lost after that 5 minute session I had with it. I think I will stick to my DSi.

Checking out the last part of the floor we haven’t seen, we ran into the WB booth and holy hell they had Mortal Kombat! I frantically looked for someone to set up an appointment with and was met with a “we are all booked up for the whole PAX East”. Saddened, Kimerex and I were about to walk away when we were told to follow the person handling the appointments and were lead to a machine to play Mortal Kombat. Being media again had its benefits. By far, the people at the WB booth were the most courteous and helpful people of the show so far. As we played, we had a developer talk to us at first about the game using canned responses but Kimerex flipped the switch on the guy. Kimerex told the dev “You must be tired.” followed by talking to the dev about how he hated MK vs DC Universe and is happy Mortal Kombat is going back to its roots. The dev lit up at that comment by Kimerex and seemed to let out a sigh of relief that he didn’t have to do the canned media responses to the mundane questions most of them ask. As we played, we loved every second of it. Again, Kimerex beat me but I at least put up a fight. Everything that was so right about the classic Mortal Kombat is back in the newest iteration of the game. Moves and combos seemed easy to figure out and the feel of kombat was satisfying. The dev, which I totally spaced on his name due to being drained since it was nearing the end of the day, ask us what our history was with the franchise and how we felt about the direction Mortal Kombat is going back to. It almost felt like we were the ones getting interviewed. When we were finished with dev shook our hands and thanked us with a genuinely happy attitude. We in turn told him to get some sleep since he looked like he needed it. He laughed and said he is leaving right away.

So as I sit here writing this article, as Kimerex relaxes at the desk…bastard, we finish day one of PAX East fulfilled and looking forward to the next two days. Now if you’ll excuse me, I am going to pass out no…….

Day Two

Like the dead, we rise from our resting areas and proceed to get my life blood, coffee. Hotel brand is not as good as Dunkin Donuts but it will do in a pinch. Taking what we learned from day one, we knew where everything was to make our appointments easier. Since we have seen pretty much the whole floor, utilizing the the time before each of our meetings to collect our thoughts and prepare in the media room became essential. Really small media room as well as scarce amounts of outlets stared back at us, however. Why can’t media get a bigger room?

Our first meeting of the day was with Square Enix for Dungeon Siege 3. Weird start to the meeting. First, we couldn’t find anyone at the Alienware booth to help us find where Square Enix was posted up. Finally being able to get a sliver of a cell signal to send an email to Elizabeth Stewart, the Square Enix rep we made an appointment with, we managed to stumble into our first appointment. Elizabeth was very sweet and introduced us to Nathan Davis, Associate Producer of Obsidian Entertainment, which is the development team putting their spin on the Dungeon Siege series. Kimerex jumped in and asked…
*generic vinyl record scratch sound*
I guess I’ll (Kimerex) take it from here. Its always been a thing with us on the Herocast to try and grab for a “this is what we were going for” idea from some one on the dev team. This. PAX East. This convention. This was the first time we could physically hold some one accountable for giving us this info. First I should bring this up : We are new to all of this. The most face time I’ve spent with a game company was having a rep from Big Huge Games talk to my class at college about how they do business. Had my own issues with that, but moving on. At PAX East we found ourselves in a blend of PRs and devs melding in a single space. At the time we were still tweaking the entire concept of how to be viewed more as friends to the human side of the industry rather than vultures seeking the next big breaking story. Still a work in progress. For this though, we stumbled around a bit until I walked into the comparative idea on the grand “What?”. He told us they were shooting for an easy to pick up action driven fantasy game. Recalling action games of my past a few ideas stood out for the genre. Customization and story.

With that I sat down and, dawning my headset-for-normal-head-size-people, I hoped that Andyb0y was actually figuring out the “we’re your friends” concept of interviewing. What I played was fine. I will say this right now. Not my game. Not the game I remembered. Not an action RPG that I feel truly connected to… so far. This is a hands on demo, and it held the marks of a game that is a current working product model. Difficulty arc residing in damage increase. Characters are very individual and, in a sense, not overly customizable. This, for me, puts more emphasis on the story. Again, this is a demo and it certainly had a good foundation for creating a well thought out narrative, and honestly say what you will about Obsidian and Alpha Protocol, the narrative was still good. There are hints of that same feel here in Dungeon Siege III as well. Though I feel I will miss my heavy plate armor, crossbow wielding necromancer, shattering the mold with every arrow fired, I feel that as an RPG, DS3 should not be directly compared to the former titans of the iso-action genre. As with how Might & Magic has taken a different path with many of its titles, I feel that by handing off the Dungeon Siege title, Gas Powered Games has allowed Obsidian to chip away at the ties holding the title to the standard isometric view game.

It would be interesting in the future to see the fps Dungeon Siege (Dark Messiah shout out). While I took all this in Andyb0y was talking with our currently favorite dev from PAX East, and he probably has something to say that I only got a glimpse of after words. So with that I return you to your regularly scheduled program.
*music from record resumes* Ahem…thank you Kimerex. As he was off playing the demo, I was actually doing some work, hehe… work. When starting up the Dungeon Siege 3 demo, Kimerex went to Hardcore Mode and immediately Nathan was floored by the bold choice. I mostly discussed how I loved how good the story in Alpha Protocol was hoping for the same treatment of the story in DS3. I also had to mention that I bought the game at full price and not when it went on sale for cheap on Steam recently and again Nathan was happy for that. Support the games you love people. Anyways, I noticed the demo stations set up were using Xbox 360 controllers and proceeded to ask Nathan how Obsidian was handling the control aspect of the game. Where they going to focus equally on controllers and the traditional mouse and keyboard? Nathan assured me that keyboard and mouse is the forefront for controls but controllers will not be just thrown in haphazardly.

At this point I tried to get away from the standard questions people usually ask developers at these events. I ask Nathan if he could tell me a story about anything crazy or just something that no one would really know as long as it didn’t get him in trouble. After thinking really hard (must have been a good question to ask) Nathan gave me something I thought was pretty cool. It’s not an amazing story about how someone came to work drunk screaming “DUDE’S! I HAVE A GREAT IDEA!” and then proceed to tell a messed up dream he had. This was more of a look into what developers deal with. Nathan went into the story of how when most companies show off a demo of work in progress, they have to “thread the needle”, meaning that the developer showing off the demo has to make sure to avoid certain bugs that are not quite tweaked out of the game yet. With Dungeon Siege 3, Nathan said it just all came together for the team over at Obsidian and when time came to show off a demo to the Square Enix overlords (hehe) all he had to do was put them in front of the game and say “Here you go”. Nathan and the rest of the team was confident enough to not “thread the needle”. It’s stories like what Nathan told me that make for a better understanding about the process of games being made then asking about the “pack mule” in DS3 (semi-inside joke. I told you, we’re trying to be friendly dammit).

Since Obsidian has a history with Alpha Protocol and how Sega was so strict with the way they wanted the games direction to go, Nathan explained to me that Square Enix as well as Gas Powered Games gave Obsidian the creative freedom to take the Dungeon Siege  series and put their own flavor to it. Props to Square Enix as well as Gas Powered Games for letting developers do what they do best.

After that wonderful meeting, we went to write notes down so we wouldn’t forget all the amazing information we got from it. Once we downloaded our brains, it was time to relax and hydrate, since that is important at any convention you might find yourself at. Our next meeting wasn’t until 3pm so we had an hour to relax in the food court. As time grew near, we made our way towards the Bethesda booth for a hands on look at one of Kimerex’s most anticipated games of this year, Brink. We again had to find someone to help us out. I understand every booth is trying their hardest to keep everyone happy but it’s a little frustrating to come to an appointment and not find the person you need. Kimerex…it’s your turn friend. GO GO GO!

Ho-kay. Soh. Splash Damage. These are my FPS gods. To me they stand as the definition for a proper understanding of how an objective driven multiplayer experience should work. So, Brink. Not knowing about Splash Damage’s plan to release such a title spurred me to break my “no major FPS purchases after Quake Wars until the next title” rule. After years with no direct news, I broke down and bought BFBC2. Over time I gave in to liking the style and gameplay of DICE’s brain child, but at all times I urned for the Splash Damage touch. Ever since Wolfenstein : ET, they were my company. I played FEAR and CS and other such FPSes of the time, but thos never stacked up to the overall sense of caring about the community that came from the Enemy Territory games. Brink beyond lived up to my expectations. And the key part of this is that I didn’t even get to play it on my platform of choice. PS3, and still good. And fyi, I took top spot in our grouping for the game. Day 1 purchase for me. Hands down. Thrilled to have experienced this glimpse into my future life style, I didn’t mind that we scheduled playing Bethesda’s Hunted right after. I can honestly say co-op action is not my game. It has its place, and I understand that. At the very least I could look for the common downfall in a co-op style game and see what Bethesda, a company that I still hold a good amount of respect for, is doing for the genre to fix it. Then to have the chance to talk to people who I consider heroes, afterwards. Fuck Disney. Give me this any day of the week.

That energy dwindled when we discovered our PR contact knew ninjitsu and managed to vanish without a trace into the shadows of PAX East. This left everyone at the booth confused as to why we were still there. Ultimate… sad…face… I will still be buying Brink. Thats just how it is, but I still wanted to give the other titles that Bethesda had on hand a fair shot. I respect them too much to have given them anything less, but time constraints kicked in while waiting for some one to talk to and it seemed as though the turbulent-historied Obsidian was going to take the “favorite people to talk to” award home from all of us here at the Herocast by default. Maybe down the line the Herocast will step up our game and make the short drive to Bethesda’s HQ near us and rectify the situation. wink wink.

Thanks again Kimerex! Now with the media only event at 9am for day three as well as being worn out mentally from day two of PAX East, we decided to make one quick stop to buy some cool artwork from Udon Entertainment and I picked up my own copy of PAX East 2009 and Penny Arcade: The Series Season 1 cause I might as well support an awesome event such as PAX East so that it continues to happen year after year. So closing out day number two of our coverage of PAX East, I am looking forward to day three, for that is the day we can go not as media, but what we are….gamers.

With the dearth of differentially in the FPS market of games, People Can Fly and Epic tries to inject some fun back into our FPS games with Bulletstorm.

Bulletstorm’s story is pretty cut and dry. A squad of assassins known as Dead Echo are lead to believe that they are doing a just cause in their killings. On one mission, you find out details that you have been duped and the Captain of Dead Echo, Grayson Hunt, goes on a revenge hunt for the General that betrayed them all. Things, of course, go sour when you do find General Sorrano and take his warship down…along with your ship. Now stuck on the planet Stygia, you must trudge through the unknown dangers to find Sorrano and exact your revenge.

I like that the story doesn’t get in the way of all the action of the game but in turn gives some life to an otherwise fast paced “Gears of War” game. The main game changing mechanic People Can Fly put into Bulletstorm is the skill shot points system. What that entails is the more creative you are with your kills using various weapons as well as the enviroment, you get points to use to either upgrade, buy ammo, or unlock a secondary fire for your weapons.

For most of the game, I had tons of fun with the various ways I could kill people but soon realized that I was doing a handful of skillshots repeatedly since it was the easiest way to get past most of the enemies. Of course if you want to get every skillshot in Bulletstorm (reported to be in the hundreds), you can use the handy skillshot guide in the menu system. Shooting in the game feels good enough to give the player a sense of power with each shot. I do have to say that once you get the Penetrator (a gun that shoots drill missles), you will fall in love instantly. By far my favorite gun in the whole game.

Besides the skillshots and unique weapons, the dialouge in the game is charming, if you are into the crass humor it projects every minute in the game. I would love to know how someone was approached for the task of writing the dialouge for the game. The foul mouthed curses they come up with is downright hilarious. Sure, there are some lines that replace common curse phrases with the word dick but when you hear things like “Kill your dick”, “Sushi-Dick”, and my favorite “I’ve seen things that will turn your asshole purple” you can’t help but wonder what the meeting was like when the script was reviewed by the voice actors. i know this may seem childish that I find this humorous but I feel that this on top of the story gives Bulletstorm a sense of charm that makes it a lot of fun to play.

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There are other modes in the game if you want to get more out of Bulletstorm, which I didn’t feel like it helped. Echoes is a mode where you can play sections of the main story over and try to get the highest score in a certain time limit. Echoes does have a leaderboard so you can compare yourself to your friends list and see who the best is. Multiplayer mode is kinda misleading since it’s really Co-op. In a different take on Horde mode that was made famous in Gears of War 2, multiplayer has Anarchy. Same concept applies to Anarchy as they do in Horde mode. Fight wave after waves of enemies as a team. The one difference being you have to work together to get enough points by doing skillshots (by yourself or as a team) to unlock the next wave. You probably want to play with people you know and have headsets on so you can communicate properly to effectively win.

My experiences with Bulletstorm left me feeling satisfied and I picked up some new phrases to boot! Who says videogames can’t teach you new things? I only had a few sour moments with Bulletstorm (I’m looking at you train level!) and I think this game has its moments where it can look dull and ugly to amazing and gorgeous which is attributed to Epic lending a hand on the game since they are the people to go to when it comes to the Unreal Engine. Although there is not much replay value in the game, unless you are a high score junkie, I feel there is enough here for gamers to enjoy a playthrough of Bulletstorm. So all you assmaggots go out and buy this dickhole of a game! 

What if I told you that there was a game out now that for a meesly five bucks, lets you play Texas Hold ’em poker with some colorful characters that have great conversations between one another as well as unlock items to use in a widely played game that is still going strong today? You would rush out and buy it if you were sensible right? Hmm. Seems you need a little more convincing. Ok let me try to show you why Poker Night at the Inventory is a must buy (besides being cheap).

Telltale Games presents us a game that could have been a simplistic card game in which Telltale Games could have made in 5 minutes and left it at that. Instead, they decided to put a little more effort into Poker Night at the Inventory and what you get is a deceptively fun game. The art style in which the game is presented is in the fashion that Telltale Games has done their previous titles such as Sam & Max as well as Tales from Monkey Island. As you are ushered into a private back room, you see four easily recognizable characters from games you might have played. Max (from Sam & Max), Strong Bad (from Homestar Runner), The Heavy (from Team Fortress 2) and Tycho (from Penny Arcade) are your opponents for this high stakes Texas Hold ‘Em poker game.

At its core, Poker Night At The Inventory is just a basic poker game. What makes it worth the money and time to play is the colorful stories that each character tells during the game. I have sat there not playing my hand just to hear stories told by Strong Bad for the sheer fact alone that he has some funny things to say. Every now and then, one of the characters will not have enough money to play at the beginning of a new game so they offer up an item that in essence, is a part of who they are. For example, Max will give up his gun and badge as collateral. If you are the player to knock that character out of the game, you get that item and can use it in Team Fortress 2. This goes for any of the characters in the game which makes this a must buy for the Team Fortress 2 fans out there. One thing I like that Telltale Games did is when characters get knocked out of the game, they are still doing things in the background where you can see them. I like this little detail Telltale decided to do. It just makes the atmosphere of the game that much more fun as well as being able to see that the developers cared to make it not seem like a quick money grab.

Ok, so maybe there isn’t that much to Poker Night At The Inventory and I can see if you don’t like poker or the style of Telltale Games, this game is not for you. On the other hand, if you like a fun couple of hours with some really extraordinary fellows, play Team Fortress 2 still, love Telltale Games and are willing to skip that Mocha Latte from whatever coffee shop you visit, you will thank yourself later.

With so much Sonic in the wild today, one tends to forget how beautiful and fun the old Sonic the Hedgehog was on the Genesis. I spent way too many weekends with my trusty Sega Genesis and all the Sonic games for that system. With Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode One released, I take a look to see if the Sonic name can live on past the Genesis days.

Yeah, we all know I hate episodic gaming since I see it mostly a way for companies to make a lot of money by selling you the game a section at a time. With that, I still give these types of games a chance since there are some out there that I truly like (Tales of Monkey Island being one of them). After my disappointing time with Sonic Adventure, I still held true to my beliefs that Sonic never should have gone beyond the Genesis. Sonic the Hedgehog: Episode One almost proved me wrong.. almost.

Let’s get on to the things that were right about the game. First off, the art design was excellent. The colors popped, the backgrounds were like I remembered back in the day only better, and the music was similar to the kiddish style the old Sonic games used. Even the opening “SEGA” screen was It was like I was back in the 90’s all over again. The ending song for every level is the same. This great!… or is it?

Could this be? Am I wrong to hate on anything new related to Sonic now that this game is out? Nope. Still justified. I guess the transition to this generation’s technology was too much for Sonic. Either that or age has caught up to the little blue guy. Moving around seems stiff and slow, kinda like Sonic has oxeoperosis. The sense of speed is lost in this fourth version of the game, although it supposedly follows right after Sonic and Knuckles which came after Sonic the Hedgehog 3, but I digress. Not only is the sense of speed taken away from you, the momentum is gone as well. Letting go of the d-pad will have Sonic stop dead in his tracks which also ruins the illusion of speed.

Maybe I can look past that flaw and still enjoy the game… I mean, they got the art, music and ambiance right so the speed issue is just a small bump in the road for Sonic 4.

Sadly, it’s kind of hard to get over these absolute steps backwards they’ve taken, even retconning all the crap Sonic games that came after Sonic 3 (except for CD.)

Power-ups are in odd locations. Having the speed shoes in the area that has a ton of platforming is just poor design.

The very few times Sonic 4 lets you feel the speed the series is known for, you fall flat and the speed isn’t as organic as you’re working against the game to attain speed instead of enjoying an insane ride through a lightnight fast level while destroying baddies along the way.

The inconsistencies between speed running and platforming make this jaunt back into the original Sonic series a decent, but ultimately failed attempt.

So once again, my faith in a Sonic game likened to the original games is misplaced. With Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode One costing an individual $15 and the supposed episode two and three the same as well, I am a little worried that the $45 that you need to shell out for the complete game might be a bad choice. I hope the developers dash back to the design board with a little pep in their step to make sure new Sonic games feel like the good Sonic games we all know and love… not just look like them.

PS3 owners haven’t quite gotten to experience a decent third person shooter in the Gears of War series. But now, with Tecmo Koei’s release of Quantum Theory, PS3 owners can now have a taste of what 360 owners had… back in 2006. 

Quantum Theory plays, looks, and pretty much sounds like Gears of War. It also takes all of the bad from that series and throws it, unwillingly, into this game. I’d like to tell you the story of the game, the plot and the key character points, but it’s told in such a disorganized way that I’m not sure there’s is a story to begin (or end) with.

From what a lowly video-game aficionado gathered from trying to play this monstrosity, Syd (the protaganist) is trying to destroy towers that are spewing monsters from them that terrorize the post-apocolyptic world that you and a team of space marines that look like the flea market versions of the team in Gears of War must defend.

You end up running into a woman by the name of Filena that is on a similar quest and you team up with her (bow chicka wow.)

Syd uses her by throwing her into enemies and by doing so, Filena slices them up, making sort of a sexist fastball special move that you use throughout the game.

The graphics (seen here, in a really crappy Venon-in-Spider-Man-3 looking scene) are as bad as the voice acting, but the main reason I turned off Quantum Theory was the control scheme. Throw an insane amount of lag on top of unresponsive controls and you’ve got yourself a recipe for some pretty frustrating battles right from the beginning. Lining up to get a headshot only to have the input lag ruin your shot can make absolutely anyone rage, hard. I even almost made my entire review one long “FFFFUUUUUUUU.”

On top of that, the cover system they copied from Gears of War did not always work, which sucks because shoot and cover games are becoming so common that one tends to yearn for the days in which you could charge into a fight, almost as if they were playing a “video game.”

Having destructable cover, but not telling the player that, is a major annoyance that will kill you at least once. Why give us a wall to hide behind only to have it destroyed by a laser when hiding behind the pillar next to us makes us damn near indestructible. Yes, I know. Me too. It’s okay. Let’s move on.

For some reason, platforming was also added to the game design. The first time in the game I was presented with platforming, I died about 4 times before I got the timing right and no, that’s not my fault, the control scheme sucks enough so that it makes it a challenge (but not the fun kind.) What is the point of platforming in a third person shooter. I don’t want to have to worry about timing a jump in a game that should be about killing everything that moves… If the input lag wasn’t present, I am sure it wouldn’t be too bad, but still seems out of place for the style of gameplay Quantum Theory is going for.

Alright, okay, I know, this is Tecmo Koei’s first game in this genre and I should be a little more forgiving. But here’s the thing: I just wish that Team Tachyon, the developers of Quantum Theory, had taken more of the good things from third person shooters than bad.

Sonic The Hedgehog series was amazing to play on the Sega Genesis. The level designs, music, and how fast paced the action was made for many fun filled nights. I never played a Sonic game that was made after the Genesis since I thought it couldn’t get much better than that. Having people tell me that I missed out on Sonic Adventure since I never owned a Dreamcast and how amazing the game was, I said to myself “maybe I was wrong?”. With Sonic Adventure now released on XBLA and PSN, this was my chance to play what people tell me is one of the best Sonic games ever. Once again, I was right all along.

Sonic Adventure proves that Sonic should have ended its run on the Genesis. Where to begin on this monstrosity of a game…Oh I know, how about falling through the game world to your death? In the first 10 minutes of Sonic Adventure I was running through the first level and I comicaly fell through the world and died. After my little laughing fit. I preceeded to do the level over. Again, I hit the magical trap door that leads me to my doom. “Ok,” I said to myself, “maybe I just need to start the game over. Maybe it’s a bug or something.” So much to my dismay, starting the game from scratch and trying the level again for the third time yielded the same results. What the hell?! About 5 minutes went by of me deciding if I should turn of this vile game and play something actually good when I tried to go around the spot that I kept falling to my death. Wow! That actually worked.

Sonic Adventure just got worse after that little episode for me. Between the unresponsive camera, controls, horrible voice acting, dialouge, and the creepy “shower scene” I had to turn the game off. I didn’t want my image of how awesome Sonic was on the Genesis marred by this dispicable game.

Sometimes nostalgia can suger coat our eyes to what a game really is. In this case, a terrible game that should have never been re-released. I stand by my belief that Sonic was at its best on the Genesis, at least until Sonic 4 is released. Then we can see if I was wrong, but we all know that will never happen right?

MORE than enough said.

When all else fails, you go to the guaranteed franchises. Nintendo, having already milked Mario and Zelda to the point of nausea, decided that what the world needed was a new Metroid game in the form of Metroid: Other M. On top of that, Nintendo decided that Samus should become more “fleshed” out as a character for the new generations by giving the reins to Team Ninja. What we get is a mixed bag of good and atrocious.

Nintendo and Team Ninja decided to give people that never played Super Metroid (which I am guilty of never playing) a quick recap of the ending of that game. Not really caring about spoilers, I was enjoying the cut scene, but that didn’t last long. After the brief recap, you end up in a medical bay recovering from the prior events. Metroid: Other M gives you the obligatory tutorial to learn the controls for the game, if you call auto targeting, auto dodging (using the d-pad just as you are about to get hit) and a recharge mechanic for health and missiles. You know, everything short of the game just playing for you (*cough* New Super Mario Bros Wii *cough*). I can forgive the basic controls due to the way the game is designed, 2D view of 3D gameplay with a first person view by turning the Wii remote and pointing it at the screen.

This is the main thing I see wrong with Metroid: Other M. The forced first person view to be able to scan for a single pixel that it wants you to find and shoot missiles ruins the flow of the rest of the game. Fighting bosses by trying to space yourself from the boss, flip the Wii remote around to point at the screen, reorient yourself with the cross-hairs, then shoot a missile before the boss attacks (since you can’t move while in first person view) is an unnecessary challenge that hurts the game more than helps. What’s wrong with just using the Nunchuck?

The story has Samus investigating a distress call from a ship in a nearby sector. When she gets to the ship (oddly named Bottle Ship) she is surprised to see some familiar faces. During the flashbacks that occur next, you see Samus explaining how she use to be a part of the Galactic Federation Front before becoming a solo bounty hunter. During mission briefings, all of her comrades in her squad gave the thumbs up to the commanding officer after he gives out the orders. To try and make Samus have some sort of rebel personality, she always gives the thumbs down. I can’t tell you how much that made me groan in disappointment in how contrived that felt.

After the trip down memory lane with the inner monolouge of Samus complete, the soldiers have a hard time getting in the front door. Of course this is no problem for Samus and her cannon for an arm (why don’t they give everyone an arm cannon?). From that point on, she decides to work alongside her former team and find out just what is happening aboard the Bottle Ship (no, not the kind Mark Wahlberg made in The Lovely Bones!). The story comes off as dry and empty feeling with the voice acting non-existent. Most of the time Samus doesn’t talk out loud but instead has narration going on inside her head. Somehow, everyone is able to understand her without Samus ever uttering a word.

With the thought of her being a rebel still in your minds, tell me why Samus would need authorization to use any of her abilities and equipment? Instead of the usual method of finding your equipment throughout the game, you must receive authorization from Adam, your former commanding officer. Samus is an ass kicking, world class bounty hunter. She should answer to no one. With this poorly thought out design, Team Ninja failed in my eyes to get the character right and voice over wasn’t going to make up for it. Early in the game, you end up in a lava sector and the heat slowly drains your health. It’s not until you get to the boss that Adam tells you over the comm that he authorizes you to use your heat shield to protect you from the damaging heat. What?! Wouldn’t that make more sense to authorize use of the heat shield as soon as I step into the sector? Who are these incompetent morons? No wonder Samus left!

With all of that distaste, I still found some enjoyment when I was running through corridors and trying to find hidden areas. At least those parts of the game made me feel like I was playing a Metroid title. Still, there is too much wrong with the game for me to suggest buying this game unless you are a hardcore Metroid fan. Even then, it might be too hard for fans to stomach poorly implemented first person view, mediocre story and flawed mechanics.

Like some of you, I didn’t play Starcraft back in 1998. I don’t have a long history with the series so I wasn’t expecting to get caught up in the immense hype that is Starcraft II. I mean besides the hardcore competitive online play that would take too much dedication for me to get to a decent level of play, what does this series have to offer anyone on the outside of Real Time Strategy games? Simple, as I discovered: one hell of a great story.

Let it be known that Real Time Strategy (RTS) games are not my forte. I love to play them, but man do I suck at ’em too! I usually play for the campaign mode and dabble in the multiplayer for a few rounds before resigning to the fact that I will barely win. I’m sure there are a lot of you out there that just shy away from RTS games entirely since the learning curve for competitive play is fierce. On the flip side, if you can look past the multiplayer aspect of RTS games and focus on the story, you will find the genre quite entertaining, as is definitely the case with Starcraft II.

Now not knowing the story going in, I expected to be totally lost and not be able to immerse myself into the Starcraft universe. I have to hand it to Blizzard, they really made sure that anyone playing the game would have a clue as to what happened previously in the Starcraft universe. While you install the game, it gives you a brief rundown of the story leading up to Starcraft II. Still images accompanied by a narrator help you get caught up as you wait for the progress bar to hit 100% completion. Even if you don’t pay attention, it is pretty easy to figure out what is going on in the story.

I played Starcraft II on casual mode since I am not very good at these games and I found it did challenge me at certain points but I wish I had played it on normal since it would have forced me to learn to play more properly. Casual mode is a perfect entry for people new to the RTS scene with decent balance between fun and challenging events to make you feel like it is not holding your hand through the game. Even so, I still had a wonderful experience all the way to the end. If you want to learn how to play RTS games in general, Blizzard, very smartly, included a tutorial mode to teach you the basics up through to the advanced tactics needed to be an efficient player. There is even a challenge mode to accompany the tutorial mode that presents certain challenges that teach you how to fully understand and learn the ways of RTS games. Some challenges have you pick the right units to counter the enemy presented to you and when you get to the more advanced challenges, the game has you use nothing but hot keys to perform actions by disabling the mouse. This all may seem a little daunting to some but it felt like Starcraft II was approachable enough for anyone to sit down and give this game a try. Not only can you apply what you have learned in the two modes mentioned to Starcraft II, but for the most part, it can be applied to all RTS games.

Besides the wonderful story, Starcraft II has amazingly well done cut scenes that blew me away. Most of the dialogue was entertaining though some moments were a little rough (Jim Raynor has a little trouble saying Protoss). After every mission, you are presented with a hub world where you can interact within it. With the point and click interface like adventure games have, you can talk to your friends, look at pictures, change the music on the jukebox, watch the news (look for the hilarious commercials) and a little further in the game, you can upgrade your units with the points you have earned in each mission. Starcraft II builds up to what you may think is an epic ending. I felt that the build up was met with an abrupt end. The last missions that you embark on seem to go too fast and left me feeling like the ending was not fleshed out enough. The ride that Starcraft takes you on is still great, just don’t take it too hard when the ending is not as grand as the story leads you to believe.

You have a choice until the end of the game to go to any mission presented to you. Each mission has a certain unit you can unlock to use in the next mission. There are some units that you will see in the single player campaign that will not be present in online play due to balancing issues. The missions themselves are varied enough so that you don’t feel like you are doing the same thing over and over again. One that everyone will remember is the mission where lava rises on the low ground where the minerals are located and you have to micro manage your drones or they will die when the counter reaches zero and the lava rises to incinerate your work force. Adding achievements is also a good way to get people that love that system to replay missions to get the max achievements for each. If that wasn’t enough for you, Starcraft II throws you a curve by having you make a choice a couple of times during the story that effects the outcome of the mission before it even starts.

You might be saying to yourself “This game sounds amazing but my PC is old and I doubt this game will run”. I have a 2 year old PC that runs this game fine at medium settings and the game still looks good and plays smooth. If you have a decent video card as well as at least a core 2 duo CPU, this game will run fine. I have heard people with MacBooks are having issues with poor frame rates as well as overheating. If you have access to a Windows OS and have the space, I would suggest using Boot Camp and turning things down to low to get a decent performance out of your Macbook.

At $60 ($100 if you were like me and bought the Collector’s Edition), this game is worth it for the campaign alone. I never felt like I was cheated out of a full game at all. It even made me want to play the original Starcraft to experience the full story. It’s packaged with the Collector’s Edition but it’s only $19.99 for the Battle Chest if you are intrigued like I was after playing Starcraft II. If you have little to no interest in online play, this game will still feel like a complete game and I am sure you will enjoy every second of it. Who knows? You might even get hooked and become a great RTS player… like I will one day, right?