Review: Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

Posted on April 1, 2014 by necromoonyeti

Like most of my b.net friends (that is: auction house junkies and achievement whores), I downloaded Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft for a free mount. What I got was an addicting breath of fresh air laced with all the appeal of nostalgia. In Blizzard Entertainment I’ve trusted since I first picked up my copy of Starcraft back in 1998, but it would be hard to argue that the company has not grown a little washed out of late. Starcraft 2, for all its glory, faces too much competition to match the popularity of its legendary predecessor; Diablo 3 was a bore to all but the most devoted series fans; and World of Warcraft is gagging on the fumes that keep it running. I thought BlizzCon 2013 was the nail in the coffin (and I still do), but Hearthstone definitely breaks from the current trend. It is the first Blizzard release since StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty (2010) that felt fresh to me.

Hearthstone is an electronic card game reminiscent of Magic: The Gathering. Unlike M:tG, you’re not going to find yourself at a loss for players when your friends grow up and get “lives”. (sigh…) I’m sure plenty of online M:tG-style card games have existed in the past, but what’s significant here is that I have never played them. Hearthstone had a few things going for it pre-launch that genre competitors lack: it is free, it is Blizzard, and its launch coupled with a long over-due Battle.net meta program that makes it highly visible to current Blizzard customers. The minute you click play, you’ll find a few other perks. Peter McConnell’s soundtrack is nothing short of brilliant, the game is conceptually very simple to grasp, and the graphics strike that balance between clarity and imagination that is non-existent in modern gaming. (If you don’t know what I mean by this, consider a modern game with severely limited character development–say Mists of Pandaria–to an old-school NPC overload like Suikoden, and ask yourself which game you remember more characters in.)

Once you’ve been at it a while–I’ve been playing for all three weeks the game has been public–some obvious cons will emerge. The game is highly dependent on card acquisition, and the availability of new decks is unnecessarily limited. Playing strictly for free, a casual Hearthstone fan will accumulate roughly two card packs every three days. A pack consists of five cards, with at least one guaranteed to be rare or higher (rarities roughly parallel WoW’s system of common, uncommon, rare, epic, and legendary). Because the game is new, the total amount of cards out there is relatively low, leaving little room for creative builds that can succeed in the absence of numerous epics and legendaries. Unfortunately, Blizzard offers no easy progress through pay. Booster packs (5 cards) can be purchased at a rate of 2 for $3, 7 for $10, 15 for $20, and 40 for $50. At the outset, nothing short of the all-in $50 deal is going to guarantee you much of an upper hand, and by the time you’ve accumulated 20 or so free decks through casual play the $20 and lower options seem like too much of a gamble. So if you want to roll your way up into the higher ranks, you’re stuck paying the full retail price of a major release or else sticking it out for free over an extended period of time. There is no financial happy medium. You will likely find yourself wavering between ranks 17 and 19 for a long, long time until you’ve gotten lucky enough to build a competitive deck. I would happily pay $20 for 40 booster packs at least once, but $50 is unreasonable.

Blizzard does not currently allow cards to be traded or sold, and that makes some practical sense. (I would just roll fake accounts and trade free boosters to my main until I had the full collection in a matter of days.) What they offer instead is a “disenchant” feature, where you can permanently destroy cards and use the byproducts to craft others of your choosing. The problem with this system is that it leaves collectors in the dust early on. Until you’ve accumulated enough duplicates, you’ll be faced with the unpleasant choice between remaining in the lower ranks and abandoning rare cards.

On the plus side, extensive losing streaks are pretty uncommon. The game seems to be very well balanced to match you against players of similar skill/decks. Skill development will cap out before deck improvement, unfortunately, but the monotony can be broken by a system that allows you to play 9 different classes loosely based around their World of Warcraft parallels. My Warlock deck might cap out at rank 17, but I haven’t even touched a Druid yet. Boosters are not class-specific, so what I earn on an alt class is of equal worth to me. Whether alternate class play too will dull before higher-level decks can be built is still too soon to tell. I can say that three weeks into the public launch, Hearthstone is still sufficiently captivating to chew up an hour of my evening daily.

I love this game not only for its innate appeal, but for its status as proof that Blizzard can break from their self-imposed molds and release a game that is not dependent on a franchise model. My dreams of a World of Starcraft are still far-fetched, but I really, really hope that Hearthstone succeeds. It serves as a reminder that, before Blizzard found themselves inextricably bound to decade-old gameplay models, they were the most innovative corporation in the world of PC gaming.

Did I mention that Peter McConnell’s soundtrack is godly? Russell Bower might be at the peek of his career with Mists of Pandaria, but this is what I want to hear in a game. Two thumbs up for Hearthstone all around.

Shad#1129 on battle.net if you want to hit me up for a round or two. 🙂

The Reaper of Souls

Posted on March 28, 2014 by Semtex Skittle

There’s no need to be afraid. Spoilers do follow (to the extent that a Diablo game can be spoiled). You have been warned.

So, in the relatively recent (surprisingly still recent!) past… Blizzard Entertainment released a hilariously long-delayed sequel, which is sort of their hallmark, in Diablo 3. Probably everyone who had some interest in the Diablo franchise played it. And, in several ways, it was sort of the ultimate evolution of the Diablo formula and format. Is the storyline silly? Yes. In fact, it borders on preposterous. But it also holds together in a ‘good enough’ way to propel the action through a variety of beautifully rendered locales killing everything in sight. Reaper of Souls does not alter this formula. Presumably none of us tuned into Diablo for storytelling, right? It’s not an RPG. It’s a game where you click on monsters and kill them. Your reward is better loot, which makes it easier to click on monsters and kill them. It is weirdly absorbing in its way, but it is not high art. This is a game about a visceral experience; it is purely about fun.

And Diablo 3 was fun. It improved heavily upon Diablo 2. Each class can now be either sex! Each class now has a half dozen abilities in play at a given time, rather than just ‘left click’ and ‘right’ click… and the procedural generation, while still present, is a little more structured… or, at least, it feels a little more structured. Some areas seem to vary little between different playthroughs. To be perfectly honest, while it is a very competently produced game, a tight experience, with lovely graphics… I didn’t feel like I had $60 worth of game when I acquired Diablo 3. I think I eventually got enough play hours out of it to where I can shrug and move on… but I didn’t expect to find myself shelling out another $40 for Reaper of Souls. I did it anyway, though.

The good news is, for what fence-sitters may remain… Reaper of Souls is pretty good! Let’s discuss several reasons why:

– Act V. Act V is a massive act, easily twice the size of any of Diablo 3’s four acts. It comes complete with an entirely new selection of monsters, three major bosses with complex battle mechanics and a variety of environments, all of which are pretty cool. It’s hard not to respond to Act V as the best overall Act available in the game now. Act V, for those who haven’t been paying attention, follows the Nephalem’s quest to save the entire world of Sanctuary from a renegade angel, Malthael, whose exact plan remains unknown.

– Crusader. Crusader is the new class, a melee attacker like the Barbarian or Monk. The Crusader uses a weapon and shield style, though the weapon can be two-handed with the use of a passive skill slot. In play, they feel strong defensively, with a good area of effect capability. I have yet any of their legendary items with my own eyes, but the class does represent a new way to experience the game. I certainly can’t claim to have 60’d a Crusader, let alone 70’d… but I have played the Crusader, and it is good.

– Loot 2.0. I know this actually launched at the start of March, but it was part of the build-up to Reaper of Souls. I get how a company seeking profit would clamp onto the idea of the real cash auction house. I get how the economic power of the World of WarCraft Aution House could invite the creation of a similar body in Diablo 3… but even the most hardcore players I know would suggest that the existence of both cash and gold AHs was a mistake in Diablo 3. At best, they did nothing to improve the experience. In the real world, they significantly harmed it.

Now that the Auction House is gone… we get Loot 2.0. A universal improvement over loot 1.0, randomly generated loot now tends to generate according to your needs. Stats are much more likely to roll for your class, legendaries will (almost) always be for your class. Sets? I haven’t seen much of, despite a good number of hours invested… but I assume they adhere to similar principles.

– Bosses 2.0.

One area where Reaper of Souls really shrines is in boss design. Did you like the act bosses in Diablo 3? Because loot 2.0 comes with boss 2.0, and even without the expansion, the purple encounters throughout the game have been tweaked, revisited, improved… and it goes double for Reaper of Souls itself. Uzrael, the first of three significant act bosses, was more complex than the act bosses in Diablo 3… more complex than Baal had been in Diablo 2… Blizzard applying lessons learned from years of creating raid encounters for increasingly sophisticated MMO players. But there are balances to be struck, and they differ between products. A single character has to be able to confront Malthael at the finale of Reaper of Souls, and ultimately that’s as much a part of the game as 10/25 man raids are for World of WarCraft. This is a process that easily could have been screwed up, but instead it’s been implemented beautifully. Malthael’s encounter is an epic affair, featuring no easily discernible pattern, with Malthael possessing at least a dozen different types of attacks, some of which are not easy to dodge. He will test both your skill and your gear, and it was awfully satisfying to finally see him fall.

– Difficulty 2.0

Reaper of Souls heralds a new dynamic difficulty system for Diablo.. one that is based, more or less, on your gear… rather than your level. In Diablo 2, and again at Diablo 3’s launch, difficulty consisted of Normal, Nightmare, Hell, etc. difficulties, each higher difficulty “unlocked” by completing the previous one. In order to proceed, you have no choice but to play through the entire storyline, consecutively. It made it harder to just “jump in” to games with your friends unless they were in the same difficulty of the game, and the difficulty jumps generally were quite drastic.

Difficulty 2.0 attempts to smooth all of this with a much more dynamic difficulty system. Now, the player has access to a several ‘standard’ difficulty levels, and then Torment levels which are designed for high-level (60+ minimum) play. The higher the difficulty you play on, the bigger the bonus is to the player’s experience points earned, gold and item find. Since this sliding scale also stacks with the inherent bonuses from having multiple players in the game, high level runs on Torment difficulties with your friends can produce quick dividends in terms of loot. Of course, there’s always better loot just around the corner…

These are the most substantive changes. They were needed, they are positive, and if anything could re-invigorate the Diablo 3 experience for you… this patch and expansion will probably do it. The game features many other improvements, like customising items (both a single property of a given item can be swapped out, and its appearance ‘transmogrified’, using a new artisan in town), an expanded stash, re-worked items and class features, and so on.

There are two big negatives, however. They are intertwined, and they are compelling.

– $39.95 U.S.. And that’s not me getting overcharged for physical media at Wal-Mart. That’s from Blizzard’s digital store, through my Battle.net account. For an expansion? Ouch. Now, obviously, they did a lot of work on this one. Act V is big, Malthael is a bad ass, and all of the other updates and improvements were welcome… but it’s still a stiff price tag to pay for a game add-on. I’m suspicious of the idea that a new character class is really that big of an addition to this type of game. But there it is. They’ve already got my money.

– It’s still Diablo. That means that its replayability mileage for you [i]may vary[/i]. Just keep that in mind, before you shell out your hard-earned money. Still, if Diablo has always been something you’ve enjoyed, you will find this the most pleasing offering so far.

2013 in Video Games

Posted on January 4, 2014 by Semtex Skittle

2013 was a year. And video games were released. And many of them were played by millions. Some of them were enjoyed!

This what I theoretically write about, right?

So let’s talk 2013. In video games. Unfortunately, I didn’t play many terrible games this year. I managed to nail most of my selections, and then I spent some time dealing with serious family problems that repressed my desire to game. Also, I spent a lot of time playing Final Fantasy games. But I do have some thoughts on what happened this year… I’m going to hand out a couple of awards. I’m going to do a couple of lists. Listen, guys, I’m not always great with structure.

Five Games Not Enough People Played*, In No Particular Order
1. Skulls of the Shogun. Critically acclaimed (like, really acclaimed. With good reason) I’m still the only human being I know who has actually played this game. Unless some of you have been holding out on me.
2. Space Hulk. I promise, it’s not bad. Uhh… anymore.
3. Mechwarrior Online. Somehow, the Mechwarrior franchise is not dead… just dying and gasping for air. Still, you can play a real Battletech game for the first time in like 10 years.
4. GTA V! No, but seriously guys, did you play Rogue: Legacy? It’ll make you want to remove your own brain. Or you’ll really have fun. Or, probably both.
5. Saints Row 4. I don’t care how many people played it, there are people who didn’t. And that’s a shame.
*This figure was scientifically determined by a sampling of people I know personally. They represent all of you.

The Five Games I Enjoyed Most in 2013
5. ~~Final Fantasy Mystic Quest~~ Tomb Raider. I understand the criticisms that a) the characterization of Lara Croft is a little uneven. B) It’s uncomfortable to watch Lara become increasingly sneaky and (especially) brutal as the game goes along. No matter how much visceral pleasure one might gain from murdering crazy rapey cultists with a climbing pick. C) The puzzles which were the entire point of the series have been relegated to optional side-missions. I get all of that. I promise. This game was still really, really good, and it gave me hope that the Tomb Raider series is moving in a cool direction.
4. Grand Theft Auto V. The release of a Grand Theft Auto game is, basically, An Event. It’s not just another video game release. It’s Grand Theft Auto. It’s an institution. Everyone takes a couple days off work, buys a case of red bull/”Code Red” Mountain Dew/a couple grams of coke and a hundred hours simply disappear. Right? Well… GTA V definitely did a lot of things right. But as usual, I was left with the feeling that the game was working harder to impress me than to let me have fun. Consider me impressed. But I definitely wasn’t always having fun. And yes, I was deeply disturbed by the torture mission. And no, I’m not ignorant of the fact that it’s supposed to be biting satire.
3. Heart of the Swarm. The long (long, long, LONG) awaited sequel to StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, finally dropped this year. Only 4? 5? more years to go for the epic conclusion! Heart of the Swarm is basically a vast improvement over the original StarCraft II without really changing that much stuff. A couple new units, a very good new campaign (not that WoL’s was at all unenjoyable), and a consistent multiplayer experience. Just because I suck at the multiplayer does not mean it’s bad.
2. Payday 2. Just in terms of hours wasted, it’s hard not to rank this one #1. Or it would be, if the #1 slot wasn’t so preposterously clear that it doesn’t even merit discussion. Anyway, Payday 2 can be frustrating, still has a number of infuriating bugs, and occasionally feels like it doesn’t have nearly enough content. Plus, I’m tired of getting ‘The Jaw’ masks. Do you guys know how many ‘The Jaw’ masks I have? I don’t want to talk about it. Anyway, one of the great time wasters.
1. Saints Row IV.

A Game That Somehow Didn’t Make the Above List But I Want To Discuss
To: Magic: The Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers 2014.
Quite a mouthful. I actually think it may just be ‘Magic 2014’ this time around. I think it’s okay for me to refer to it that way. This franchise has been putting out an excellent game every year for four years. It is not a replacement for MTG: Online if you’re looking for real constructed formats. This game is its own limited format, and if you don’t want that, then don’t buy it, you’ll hate it. 2014 incorporates all of the gripes I can remember people mentioning since the first (MTG:DTP, no year the first time around!) iteration dropped: You have full control over the 80 cards (or whatever it is) that can be unlocked for each deck. You have full control over the land in each deck. You can manually select which lands tap so the AI can’t cause you to “tap out” of a colour you still need. However, 2014 can’t make the top 5 list because it has some real problems with the balance of its constructed format (the top tier decks are too top tier) and the Steam version was totally assassinated by rampant cheating in the Sealed format early on. Rough year. Still, this is a franchise people should know about.

The Bethesda Softworks Award
For: Most inexcusably buggy release that still has serious problems after a couple major patches
To: Battlefield 4
This award was originally going to go to Space Hulk until I recently revisited it. Fortunately for Space Hulk, the major patches fixed all of the problems for me, at least! Fortunately for everyone, Dice’s Battlefield 4, while incredible in its recreation of a battlefield environment that I can drive an attack boat around and kill people in… is almost hilariously bugged out. A couple of major patches have seemed to create just as many problems as they have solved. And that’s on the (relatively) stable XBox 360 release. I am told that the releases for PS4 and XBox One did not go smoothly. I don’t own either of those consoles yet, so I can’t speak personally… but I have no reason to doubt my sources (they include everyone I know who has played BF4 on a new console). This is particularly infuriating for me because I really want to play and enjoy Battlefield 4. But if I’m the only person who can play it without their bullets shooting sideways and their save data being corrupted… uhh… I guess I don’t have much reason to play at all, under those conditions. Thanks for nothing, Dice.

The Blizzard Entertainment Award
For: Wait, HOW long has that been in development again?
To: Defense of the Ancients 2
This isn’t really fair, since Dota 2 has been in beta for much of the long development cycle, and thus people have been able to play it. Still, the game had been in playable beta for over two years before it ‘dropped’. That having been said, it’s free to play on Steam, so what the hell do I care?

Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Award
For: ‘HD’ remake, ‘updated’ version, or whatever, that I randomly enjoyed
To: Age of Empires II: HD Edition
I seriously think I enjoyed it more than I did when the game first dropped. Mercifully, while this HD version is nothing (so far as I could tell) then a new coat of paint slapped on an ancient game… it was a very pretty coat of paint. And the game runs stably on my 64x OS. And it’s fun! What more could I ask for, really?

Game of the Year
For: Game of the Year
To: Saints Row IV.
C’mon. If you’ve never dipped your toes into the franchise… Saint’s Row IV concludes the story of ‘The Boss’, the nameless player-avatar protagonist who rose from being a nothing street punk to the leader of the Third Street Saints, which then became a massive media empire, to becoming elected as the President of the United States. I believe the tagline for the game on Steam is: “Gloriously Stupid” “Stupidly Fun”. That’s about right, except I don’t know how ‘stupid’ it really is. Saints Row IV is deeply referential; it pays flippant homage to essentially the entire history of gaming. Many of the references range from shrewd to brilliant, and many of them are simultaneously hysterical. It doesn’t have the size or scope of Grand Theft Auto V, but it’s every bit as much fun to play (this is a lie: it’s like 90283048x more fun to play). The absurdity of the game may not be to all tastes, I suppose, but all video games are absurd in one way or another. Give it a chance. Let it win you over. Oh, the PC version has some bugs. I didn’t find that they dampened my gameplay experience too much, but they are there, and they do suck when they crop up. Stupid ports.

Payday 2

Posted on August 25, 2013 by Semtex Skittle

A little while back, a little studio called Overkill put a game on Steam called Payday: The Heist. The release completely passed me by. In fact, I was totally ignorant even of the existence of the title until a group of my friends all bought it and decided to start robbing banks together. They were so taken with it that they demanded that I join them, and I couldn’t have been happier with the purchase. We passed many nights (and into the early mornings, sometimes!) trying to grind our way through harder difficulties, and try to learn more advanced ways to stealth through the various ‘heists’, which included stuff ranging from your standard-issue bank job through a Left 4 Dead inspired hospital mission called, fittingly, No Mercy, where a shadowy anonymous buy was willing to pay bank in exchange for a sample of infected blood.

The game was marked by a number of good ideas. It includes minor RPG elements in that your account ‘levels up’ as you play more heists, granting access to useful abilities. In the original game, most of these bonuses were tied directly to weapons and armor and your ability to last in combat against the inevitable waves of police and SWAT forces that would attempt to keep you from escaping with your ill-gotten gains. Being stealthy at the start of a heist by using silenced weapons and preventing any civilian hostages in the area from escaping to summon help could pay significant dividends as you waited for your large thermal drill to bore its way into this vault or that one. A variety of weapons and gadgets rounded out your heisting arsenal, modeled off of real-life weapons augmented by just a bit of fancy. The game included multiple difficulty levels for every heist which would affect the number and types of enemies that spawn, and add other random factors that could make heists substantially more challenging. Indeed, that random AI Director feature of the game also helped its replayability dramatically, as heists could play out very differently if things went right – or very much wrong.

Payday 2 improves noticeably upon almost all of this. The heists are now more elaborate, including multi-day criminal enterprises (such as a ‘Watchdog’ mission where you must first secure a shipment of cocaine against an FBI operation, then in ‘day 2’ load the coke onto a drug boat at the docks, all while under police assault), and a wider variety of possible objectives – your crew are no longer strictly robbers, but rather highly skilled specialists for higher, men of limited principles and significant hardware.

The skill trees (Mastermind, Enforcer, Technician and Ghost, respectively) now include a wider variety of abilities, many of which can be directly employed for greater speed or stealth in the missions. Now, being a high level player with access to the best gadgets can make the simpler heists significantly easier, allowing the players to focus on the greater challenges of high difficulty level multi-day jobs. I personally find it very rewarding to try and work through missions in a stealthy way. Not only can some rewards become greater when you don’t have to battle you way through police lines, but the heists can also (often) be done cleaner and more quickly with the application of stealth. Returning is the oft-failing thermal drill which is the centerpiece of a number of missions where you try to gain access to a safe or other place you shouldn’t be, but this can now be circumvented if your technician is skilled enough to deploy shaped charges to blow off hinges, or if your ghost has an ECM Jammer that can bypass electronic security. The Mastermind can talk down inquisitive guards on the other end of the phone, easily intimidate and control civilians, and provide a slew of buffs to the group, and the Enforcer can (among so many other things) bring a powerful rotary saw to slice open less-imposing lockboxes, ATM machines, and encroaching enemies who draw too close.

Also notable in Payday 2 is a more credible electronic opponent. In the original game, the challenge was typically increased by sending more powerful units earlier in the mission, legions of ‘special’ units, and an unending stream of SWAT goons and their guns. To an extent, this is still completely true. However, the enemy now employs lesser raw numbers in favour of better tactics, and more threatening enemy units. Of course, stealth your way through the missions, and you may never have to suffer their wrath…

Payday 2 is not by any means a perfect game, however. The mission select is now done through an interface called Crime.net, which is a black and white overhead map of a city on which missions appear as ‘pings’ (as if the job just became available, complete with a timer before the job eventually disappears). Because of this system, if your crew is in favour of running a particular heist, it quite literally might take as long as half an hour of ‘browsing’ Crime.net for it to appear (or perhaps even longer!). In the most recent update, Overkill added some very basic filters to the Crime.net interface, allowing you to opt out of missions below a certain difficulty level… but this seems woefully inadequate. Though the game contains 10 heists, they re-use a couple of maps between them, and some of them are completely basic – there’s almost nothing to them. These are offset by some very complex heists higher up in pay scale, but some of them start to feel less replayable after a couple of solid nights with the group. This happened in the first game too, of course, but it’s much more annoying now with the obstacle of Crime.net possibly throwing you copy after copy of an undesirable heist that you are totally burned out on… instead of something you’d really like to do. I frankly do not understand the creative choice behind not offering better filters for this system.

While it is true that the police do not attack in such great numbers as before, they do still leave a lot of artifacts around the map, with corpses, piles of ammo, and miscellaneous gear (such as riot shields) strewn about, and I have seen the game start to chug on systems that are powerful enough to run many other contemporary games without issue. By its nature, this is probably something that’s hard for this game to overcome, but it’s a frustrating problem to have when the key resource that you need to enjoy this game to its fullest is friends who can also play it with you.

Yes, Payday 2 has in-game voice chat, and yes, you can jump into public games with strangers anytime you want. Some people might really enjoy doing so, in fact, and I don’t really mind it…. but I would much rather gather a group of 3 friends to roll with and work in tandem to complete heists. The AI team-mate can be valuable in combat because of their accuracy (though sometimes the team AI seems bewildered in a way the police AI rarely is… failing to respond even in a dire emergency) but is also frustratingly useless as they cannot transport filthy lucre, or drugs, or whatever, cannot advance mission objectives, and will occasionally blunder into unwinnable firefights against a legion of police in the middle of the street… where they can’t even be reached for a quick revive. As a result, you really want a full party, regardless of how you have to get it.

One thing to admire entirely about Payday 2 is its price point. At $29.99 on Steam (it’s also available on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, the physical media involved means your price point will be $39.99 instead), this game has real value, though I can’t necessarily recommend it if you don’t have at least one friend who would be willing to buy the game as well and commit to playing it with you. Your mileage may vary with teaming up with strangers (I’ve had a mixed bag of results, myself) but I wouldn’t have purchased the game without friends I knew for certain would play, so I certainly won’t tell you to do it!

What I Played Today: Tomb Raider (2013)

Posted on June 21, 2013 by Semtex Skittle

I hate to call this a “review”… because the game came out months ago, and I just now finished it. By now, probably everyone who is interested already knows that this game exists, that it is awesome, and that it needs to be played. But we here at The Shattered Lens also exist to serve the conservative buyer, the type who wonders to themselves “Is any single player game worth $60 anymore? How much of that $60 is being taken up by a Tomb Raider multiplayer nobody asked for or wanted?” “Oh God, another Tomb Raider?” I imagine that last line being accompanied by an outward eye roll, but with a quiet inner voice whispering, God, I hope it does not suck.

Well, fortunately for that tiny segment of the population… I am here to help you. I finished Tomb Raider today, and I have plenty to say about it, some of which I’m going to truncate in acknowledgment of the fact that this take would be a lot fresher if I’d written it two days after the game came out. I pre-ordered it. Obviously, there is no excuse for my having dismissed the game for even an instant. Now, with all that preamble managed…

Let’s look at Tomb Raider.

Of olde, Tomb Raider was a PC (first) and Console (adaptations, later simultaneous releases) puzzle / platformer game that starred well-endowed protagonist Lara Croft as she went about exploring ruins of the ancient world. As with any good “archaeology” narrative, the lines between historical fact and myth are blurred, and Lara would go on to discover things like oh, I dunno, the lost continent of Atlantis. The games focused heavily on platforming with some puzzles, which had (unfortunately) been forced into a relationship with a perennially awkward and not-optimal combat “system” which allowed for varying degrees of athleticism and varying degrees of inaccurate bullet spraying.

Tomb Raider (2013) is built on a more stable foundation. The game here essentially plays like any third person shooter you know of – there are plenty of chest-high obstacles available to shield you from enemy fire, ammo can be found everywhere (I’d say there’s a real argument that the game offers way too much ammo to the player, in fact), and like any good shooter in the Call of Duty era, you have several weapons that can be aimed down their sights and fired accurately at a precisely determined target. Not bad, right? Actually, it improves from there, hybriding in several elements that fans of the wildly popular Batman Arkham: (whatever) franchise. Lara, like Batman, learns skills and acquires new equipment as she proceeds through the story. That stuff can be used to go back and open up previously inaccessible secret areas and retrieve formerly inaccessible historical relics (though, to be honest, very little serious backtracking is required even if you intend to complete 100% of the collectibles). Lara has a predictable array of athletic moves at her disposal, including running, jumping, and climbing (including climbing-with-an-axe-climbing [the axe doubles as debatably Lara’s most powerful weapon]) as well as being a 100 pound girl who also happens to be qualified to pass the Presidential Fitness Test (try to outlast Lara Croft doing pull-ups. I dare you.) The action reminds me of Batman or Assassin’s Creed in the big picture, but the devil is in the details, and those details really do a lot to differentiate Tomb Raider from the gameplay that definitely influenced it.

Tomb Raider (2013) takes place on a lush, temperate island in the Dragon’s Triangle (a real-life region of water which extends from the southeastern Japanese coast toward the Phillipines) that was home to the ancient Yamatai civilization. Things immediately go totally awry, of course, and the rest of the game chronicles Lara’s individual journey to survive her experiences on the island – something complicated by savage and seemingly malevolent storms, and the discovery of a whole nation of crazed cultists who call the island home. Your mileage will probably vary with the actual storyline, particularly the endgame where Lara discovers the truth behind the island’s various mysteries (no fear, Lost fans, it’s all spelled out in the end!), and with the supporting characters, who are pretty one-note. To be frank, the supporting characters just don’t have much to do with this story, which is all about Lara Croft.

Lara herself is characterized extremely well, both through the excellent voice acting of Camilla Luddington, as well as through her physicality. As the player acquires new skills for Lara, she becomes demonstrably more capable in the game… and also more brutal. I have heard it argued that the game is diminished by the extent to which Lara – who has a hard time with the first occasion on which she kills another human being to survive – indulges in increasingly brutal violence as the game goes on. I would argue the opposite. I thought the game was very effective in putting myself in Lara’s shoes, so to speak, from the way the camera hovers close to her to the way she talks to herself, trying to encourage herself in grim situations, and reflecting on the madness and horror in which she has become buried. Far from objecting to Lara’s thought progression – and “morality” progression, if you want to call it that – I found myself snapping earlier than she does, at one point cursing her enemies and resolving to destroy them. Perhaps all of that pales in comparison to what I think is the strongest, best, part of Lara Croft’s character, however: Lara is never a victim. During the game, she is captured more than once, and encounters a variety of terrible situations, some of which she needs a little (very little) help to escape. But time and again, Lara draws deep into her own reserves of resourcefulness and willpower and not only extracts herself from increasingly dangerous situations… but attempts to drag the other survivors of her wrecked ship, and their would-be rescuers, with her to safety.

Fans of the series who were primarily interested in the puzzle-solving action of previous Tomb Raider games are almost certainly going to find this game a bit of a disappointment. Certainly, there are puzzles around – particularly in the optional ‘Hidden Tombs’ which can be completed for a bounty of salvage parts and experience points to upgrade Lara – but they definitely aren’t the core focus of the game in the way that they have been in previous titles. Once you have learned what to look for in the environment, the method of advancing through each open-roam area should be fairly obvious – it’s simply up to you to make the necessary jumps, climbs, etc. to reach your goals. It’s worth restating that the combat is quite a bit smoother than it was in previous installments, with obvious influences from other modern shooters giving it a much more polished feel. You may occasionally find the combat difficult, however, depending on your personal ability at sneaking around the island and murdering guards noiselessly (or avoiding them entirely). I consider myself good at stealth mechanics, but that I often prefer a straightforward solution if it will save me a lot of time (this goes triple for games where I know I’m going to be running around searching for collectibles. Better to just wipe out the whole population of badguys so they can’t harass me later).

Oh, and as for those pesky collectibles? There are a lot of them, and some of them are super hard to see in the game environment, but don’t go rushing off to find a game guide just yet… The game contains plenty of ways to find them (try setting a waypoint on the object of your desire and using Lara’s “Survival Instincts” if you really get stuck!) between the treasure maps and some of the skills you can purchase for Lara.

For me, even as a fan of both puzzles and previous installments… I really loved Tomb Raider (2013). This is one of the best pure single-player experiences I’ve gone through in a while (and, it’s worth noting, the game is not short by any means, although obviously it could be completed much faster than I managed if you were avoiding collectibles and time-killing puzzles). I encourage any of the remaining fence sitters to check this one out.

Quick Review: Word Realms!

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Semtex Skittle

Full disclosure: I was a Kickstarter backer and beta tester for this game.

So recently, Asymmetric’s “Word Realms” was released to the public as a semi-finished product. I say semi-finished because, by their own admission, there are many changes still to go. If the studio name sounds vaguely familiar, it’s probably because you’ve happened across the popular browser-based game “The Kingdom of Loathing” in the past. As a long, long, long time fan of the browser based game, I simply couldn’t resist when the opportunity came to support their new endeavour – an animated game effort with (presumably) the same kind of sarcastic humour and potential, and one based even more promisingly in the realm of words.

So here’s the skinny. Word Realms challenges you to play a lot of “Scrabble”. The combat involves forming words out of randomly generated banks of letters. Each letter has a score value, and the higher the score, the more damage that you do. It’s really that simple. So if you’ve been dominating your friends at “Words With Friends” for the last five years, then you should find yourself quite at home here, but with a catch: the combat timer is somewhat swift, and you’ll need to think quickly about your word, rather than spending days on it. Generating valuable words quickly is as important a skill as knowing how to dump off the random “Z” letters that come into your life. Frankly, I found the experience quite immersive, but your own mileage may vary based on just how much you enjoy the word games in your life.

The problem with Word Realms is that, even explored to its utmost, there just isn’t that much girth to be explored. While the game definitely has the potential to absorb an entire afternoon away from you, I’m not sure it has much more than that. There’s a small amount of replayability, I suppose, and the game does have some fun mini-games (found through the story mode in the form of dream sequences; you’ll see) and a fairly deep crafting system. I still maintain that the core game-play is probably just not substantative enough for most single player gamers who are, frankly, looking for something to suck up their free hours. That said, the $11 price tag guarantees five or six totally engrossed hours. I’m not sure how much better most modern single player experiences do in terms of bang for your buck.

For what its worth, I enjoyed Word Realms. I backed it for substantially more than $11 and I certainly don’t regret that choice. If you’re looking for something to do it would be hard to go wrong with this title. Oh, and as for the acerbic wit of Kingdom of Loathing? If you enjoy the browser game the humour will translate easily to you.

Scenes I Love: BioShock “Little Sisters: Rescue or Harvest”

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Arleigh

With today’s release of Irrational Games’ latest title, Bioshock Infinite, I look back with some fondness to the first game in the series: BioShock.

It was a game that blew most everyone away with it’s ease of gameplay, unique art direction and, most important of all, a story that made people think that gaming was close to reaching the level of art for the genre. It was a game that dared to use as one of it’s themes Ayn Rand’s own take on the philosophy of Objectivism. It was a game about choices. A game that put the player into making the moral choice of rescuing the creepy Little Sisters or harvesting them for a rare resource that meant killing them.

I’ve played the game so many times and have made choices both good and bad, but it was always difficult even knowing how things already turned out to make that first decision to either “rescue” or “harvest”. Below are the version of this very scene that fully sold the game and it’s story to me the first time I played it way back in 2007.

Harvest

Rescue

Shepard’s Last Dance

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Semtex Skittle

Well, it’s been quite a journey, hasn’t it? We’ve followed Commander Shepard across the years, and across the galaxy, battling against nothing less than our complete annihilation. But there’s one last shot in the chamber, it seems, as a sinister conspiracy seems aimed at killing off the legendary Commander Shepard. Such is the plot of the new Mass Effect 3 “Citadel” DLC, now available for 1200 MS Points.

Note that this review openly discusses details from the original Mass EFfect 3 game. So if you somehow still haven’t played it and still want to, come back and read us later. It’s alright, I won’t be offended.

I know that people have mixed feelings about content DLCs for Mass Effect 3, the ending of which is very definitive. Even with the “best” ending and the added fluff of the “Extended Cut” DLC released last summer, there isn’t anywhere else for Shepard’s story to go after the credits roll. While the “best” ending leaves Shepard’s ultimate fate ambiguous, Bioware has told us that Shepard’s story is over. So what is there to add to the gameplay of Mass Effect 3? I actually think Bioware has done a decent job of addressing this; I enjoyed the “Leviathan” DLC if only for its interesting story reveal. “Return to Omega” is cutting room floor stuff; the conclusion of Aria’s plot arc belonged in the original game, but at least its spot in the Mass Effect story makes sense. But “Citadel”… “Citadel” is one fine DLC. I would have said that the gold standard for Bioware’s DLC before this one was probably “Lair of the Shadow Broker”, which added substantially to my Mass Effect 2 experience, had an interesting plot, and some interesting combats interwoven with some great moments for Liara and Shepard.

“Citadel” is better, and it is better because it honours what has been Mass Effect’s biggest strength all along: the characters. The party interaction. The dialogue. The combat system in Mass Effect 3 is very polished, and it functions very well for what it needs to do, but I would not play Mass Effect 3’s campaign for just the combat sequences. Instead of just fighting through waves of mooks, Shepard finds himself blending into a gala at a casino, blending in at the roulette table and socializing with the who’s who of the Citadel… in between casually shutting down cameras and bypassing security while a companion distracts nettlesome guards. Meanwhile, another companion is sneaking through the ventilation system, all so you can get one single crack at someone who may or may not have answers Shepard wants. It is probably worth noting that this DLC is simply not self-serious in the way that the rest of Mass Effect 3 is. If you feel a shift in tone is dramatically inappropriate, this DLC could rub you the wrong way I suppose.

Things open with orders to put the Normandy in to the Citadel for refits and repairs, where our old friend Admiral Anderson has given over his (ridiculously) swanky Citadel apartment for your use. Anderson does not anticipate ever leaving Earth again; even if he survives the final confrontation with the Reapers, the effort to rebuild Earth is something he knows he can’t walk away from. Once there, you end up meeting Joker for sushi in a highly exclusive restaurant on the Citadel. Things go south soon after, and Shepard is forced to deal with yet another problem dragging him away from the master situation of the Reapers. Things culminate in what could possibly be the most difficult combat in the game (about which I will reveal nothing at all; better that way). I found that I didn’t mind.

The thing about “Citadel” is that it’s genuinely lighthearted and funny, with razor-sharp writing. It’s a remarkably refreshing detour from the otherwise dour tone of Mass Effect 3. The game’s tone is, largely, completely warranted… but this DLC provides a break from the agonizing struggle of the war that the original game really, for the most part, lacked. Combat sequences breezed by in a frenzy of faced-paced action and constant party banter, making me think fondly on the constant party interactions from Dragon Age II. The respites between the action sequences are more of the same. Granted, just shoving characters into the setting of Shepard’s ultra-unbelievably-luxurious-swanky Citadel apartment doesn’t feel as organic as another scenario might… but gathering party members on the Normandy is a bit of a contrivance as well, isn’t it? Let’s give Bioware a pass here. They try hard to get your old squad members involved. Tons of characters return from the previous games, offering them more screen time than they otherwise received in Mass Effect 3… including the opportunity to once again use fan-favourite Wrex as a squad member (really, what’s a squad without a Krogan?)

If you’re still angry about Mass Effect 3’s ending, after all of the time, discussion, and the “Extended Cut” DLC (and, if you are, I certainly don’t blame you – it was a travesty) then you may not find the send-off this DLC gives to the characters and the scenario any more satisfying… but, on the other hand, you might. I thought it was a nice fan-service sort of addition to the Mass Effect canon, and a fun adventure besides. Incidentally, this DLC occupied me for at least three hours so far, and I haven’t gone through everything it offers. You should make your own decisions on whether it is priced fairly based on this.

Horror Scenes I Love: A Man Chooses… A Slave Obeys

Posted on October 24, 2012 by Semtex Skittle

Video games have scenes to love, too! And I’ll be your guide through some of the finest in this space.

If you have never played BioShock, stop right now, go buy the game, and play it. Wait, it came out six years ago and you can’t be bothered? Oh well. If you’re even considering playing Bioshock, you may not want to spoil this clip for yourself. On the other hand, it might inspire you to actually play the game – something I readily encourage. In either case, would you kindly join me in enjoying what earnestly could be the greatest scene in any video game ever made?

Would you kindly. A powerful phrase.

Video Game Review: Borderlands 2 (by Gearbox Software / 2K Games)

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Leonard Wilson

2K Games and Gearbox Software have finally unleashed the sequel to it’s successful IP, Borderlands on game consoles, and wow, it’s wonderful to return to this universe. Some of my friends on Xbox Live introduced me to the original game and we had quite a bit of fun making our way through it. It was easy to have the sequel on our must play lists.

Here’s what you need to know about Borderlands. The game exists within a barren wasteland known as Pandora. In this place, we have The Vault. If found and opened, it will yield an unimaginable treasure, and as a result, Vault Hunters come from far and wide to seek it out. Along the way, you end meeting some strange characters and fighting against weirder ones. What set Borderlands apart was that it was something of a shooter / Role Playing Game and that it also contained a massive amount of weaponry. Working off of an XP system, you can upgrade your character by killing any enemies you find on the landscape, which is normal for any RPG, but the amount of different weapons in the game was massive.

It was rare to run into the same gun twice.

Borderlands 2 basically picks up where the last game left off in terms of development. Gearbox has introduced four new types of characters to work with, new landscapes and guns. Since the graphics engine is more akin to games like XIII and maybe even The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, the game moves very fast and there’s little lag online when playing with 3 other players in a Co-Op battle.

The guns in the game all have attributes of their own, such a reload factors, damage strength and scope strength (if they have them). Some guns can be used as grenades when they use up a clip. Others have Elemental qualities (which I love), in that they can set enemies on fire, shock them with lightning or shoot corrosive acid. As you level up in the game, so the available weapons, so you’ll find yourself selling or discarding the ones you’ve carried along for more powerful upgrades – unless of course you happen to own one revolver or two that you just can’t part with. Trust me, that happens.

The four characters in Borderlands 2 are the Siren (my personal favorite), who has a focus on Elemental Ability and healing factors on the battlefield. The Gunzerker is pure brute force, can duel wield weapons and can beat an animal senseless with his melee tactics. The Commando can send out a sentry turret as a backup in battle. The Assassin, new to Borderlands, has tactics similar to Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, where he can blend in with the background and send out a decoy to confuse the enemy. His sword allows for massive melee damage when he’s out of ammo.

The skill tree system in Borderlands 2 has been upgraded from the first game as well. There are upgrade paths for every character with a limited amount of points to use, which help ensure that once you fully fill a skill tree – say one that allows you to cause elemental damage to everyone in the environment when using a Siren’s Phaselock ability – you’ll want to play the game over again to work on another path. It helps to shape just how you want your character to go, and is really fun when working in a team environment. One character can focus on healing the team, while another can be pure attack. If you have communication between your players, there’s no limit to how well you can do in a battle.

If Borderlands has any limitations, it’s that you can’t benefit from having your Single Player character work in a Co-Op environment. For example, if you have a level 20 Gunzerker, he can jump into a friend’s game who is only at the start and be a major effect on the battlefield, but it gives that high level character next to nothing in XP as they’re only fighting characters that are far weaker than them. Additionally, the high level character won’t benefit from any of the missions in the game (after all, they’ve already gone through them in their own game) In a way, it’s very smart, because it helps newer players level up, but the best way to go through a Co-Op game is to start from the very beginning together. This way, you all can level up around the same time and move forward as a group.

Overall, Borderlands 2 is a fantastic game to play if you have a team to work with, moves very quick and has no shortage of ammo or enemies to blast away to your heart’s content.