Tag Archives: video games

2013 in Video Games

Posted on 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 by Semtex Skittle

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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 by Semtex Skittle

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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 by Semtex Skittle

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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.

Arcade Review: Skulls of the Shogun

Posted on by Semtex Skittle

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I went diving through the XBox Live Arcade’s new releases the other day. And you all know what that means! Yes, I’ve played Skulls of the Shogun, a new release by new developer 17-BIT (their only release to date, as far as I’ve determined), and available for 1200 Microsoft Points which (I think) is something like $15. The game draws inspiration from the classic GBA title “Advance Wars” in its game play, while its visual style reminds me of the classic XBox Live Arcade release “Castle Crashers”.

In its single player mode, the game follows the story of the tactically brilliant General Akamoto… after his death. He arrives in the afterlife prepared to claim all of the glory that his countless victories in life earned him, and is instead consigned to a bleak shore outside of the afterlife proper with only a few skeletons to keep him company. Obviously unsatisfied, Akamoto (you, the player!) begins gathering undead soldiers for an assault on the gates of the afterlife, to claim what is rightfully his. You soon learn the truth; Akamoto was stabbed in the back in life by his right hand man, Kurokawa, a noted coward. Immediately after stabbing you, Kurokawa fell on a spear, and was able to arrive in the afterlife first. There, he assumed your identity (and one of your daisho swords) and generally left everyone pretty torqued off in his wake.

Each mission (or multiplayer level) begins with each side commanding units drawn from a small pool. At first, you have access to only the slow-moving but defensively powerful Infantry and the faster but more vulnerable Cavalry. Soon after, you gain access to Archers, who are vulnerable in close combat, but very powerful at range. Archers are lethal to Infantry, whom they can outrun, but are outpaced by Cavalry and can’t fire when the enemy has closed in, while Cavalry can’t win a stand-up fight with Infantry, you see? Of course, your units can power-up in battle by consuming the skulls of the fallen. Each skull increases the maximum hitpoints of the unit, heals it somewhat, and if you eat three skulls you enter a Demon form, which gains a second action on each of your turns. The game also adds another twist in the form of Monks, spellcasting allies that you gain through capturing their shrines on the battlefield. Monks gain new spells from eating skulls, and can turn the course of a battle.

Your other main unit of concern is the General, a powerful unit (with an Infantry’s defense, the highest attack of all, and reasonable speed), however, the loss of the General means the loss of the mission. For this reason, it’s often wise to simply let the General hang around (in fact, each turn you go without ‘activating’ your General to give him orders, he heals a hitpoint and gains a maximum hitpoint, this is called ‘Meditating’, and is unique to the General) behind his men and direct the battle. Your units can also group together in tight formation to prevent the enemy from speeding past – an invaluable tactic that can help to protect your Archers, Monks, and General.

Although the unit list is limited and the game’s rules are not difficult to learn, there’s definitely some strategic depth to the game. In addition, the dialogue of the game is tight and fairly humourous, and the game itself is fun to play. You can’t ask for much more than that.

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

Posted on 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.

Faster Than Light

Posted on by Semtex Skittle

 

Entirely by accident, I discovered a game called Faster Than Light (FTL) while I was making my weekly perusal through the library over at Great Old Games. Because I like spaceships and bright shiny stars, I was instantly intrigued. Without really taking the time to learn a whole lot about the game, I went ahead and made the purchase. At $9, I didn’t feel like I had to get much return on my investment. After having sunk roughly a billion hours into FTL since that purchase, I’ve subsequently learned that FTL was funded by Kickstarter (another rousing success story! Go Kickstarter!), is actually new, despite having been on Great Old Games, and there was some buzz before it came out that I literally can’t believe that I didn’t hear even a single whisper about. I guess I haven’t been reading enough blogs after all.

My embarrassment over this game being news to me is a side issue, however. I have played Faster Than Light. Extensively. Allow me to tell you how it is, so you can decide whether that daunting $9 price point is worth it for you.

It’s great! Go buy it!

Well, alright. Let’s start with the premise. FTL is a Roguelike that stars you as the commander of a lone Federation starship with vital intelligence on the Rebel armada which you need to hustle across seemingly the entire galaxy to return to the last Federation fleet before they’re stomped by the aforementioned Rebels. Going against space type, we’re not rooting for the Rebels this time, as they are brutal, corrupt, jerks. On your journey, your ship will pick up space scrap which is used as currency. You need as much of this currency as possible in order to upgrade your single cruiser’s capabilities (the possibilities for this are extensive, including eight main ship systems, three subsystems, up to four weapon slots and three drone slots, three ‘augmentation’ slots for special systems, and your crew itself which starts small but can be expanded and include powerful alien species. So yeah.) You will need to upgrade your systems if you want to survive the long trek to the Federation fleet, and even more so if you intend to successfully defeat the final boss located there.

Your advance across the galaxy is star by star across multiple ‘sectors’ of space, with the Rebel armada in pursuit all the while, seeking to bring you down before you can bring your vital information to the Federation. Each star contains a random event, which can range from absolutely nothing, to running laser gun battles in asteroid fields, nebulae, or near stars that are experiencing solar flares. Suffice to say, given the random generation and the large range of customization options, no trek across the stars is ever exactly the same. Add in the fact that the game ultimately features about twenty unique ships each with its own unique interior layout and a unique starting loadout (some of which are much stronger than others) and you have a game that you can sink a great deal of time into.

The primary things that you, as a player, will need to do include managing your crew (crew members can be assigned to ‘man’ your ship systems. They can also be moved around to repair damaged systems, fight shipboard fires, repair hull breaches, board enemy craft, or repel boarders against your own), battling enemy ships with your craft’s weapons, drones, and boarding parties, and purchasing new upgrades and equipment to create a load-out that you feel like can go the distance. Finding combinations of weapons and special systems that work well for you is a big part of the game, and the only way that you will ultimately be able to experience any success against the final boss – an extremely difficult encounter, particularly if you are not prepared for it.

The downside for some players will be the difficulty. Faster Than Light is not an easy game. Not by a long shot. For those unfamiliar with Roguelikes, runs of horrific luck leading to catastrophe and death are incorporated by design. It is not a “problem” with the game that you might encounter a series of random events with no way out that lead to your ship exploding in the very first sector, or right before your confrontation with the boss. Death is deadly. There aren’t save points, folks, you’re back to the start if you go down in flames. This is, again, by design. It is not a “problem”, but it could be a reason why you would prefer not to play the game. So if the difficulty thing doesn’t appeal to you – and I didn’t even mention a learning curve that’s somewhat difficult to quantify – Faster Than Light may not be entirely to your liking. Of course, you may end up addicted anyway, and end up on a spiral of increasing frustration. I don’t personally recommend that path, but it’s your mouse to break, as they say.

The graphics “look like a flash game” as I’ve been told, which I suppose is true enough, but the game has spot-on sound effects and an excellent environmental music score that provides exactly the right touch of ambiance while you play. I found the graphics adequate, if nothing to rave about, and there’s something charming about the presentation, which is reminiscent of older video games and tugs at my nostalgia strings in a way that I find appealing. I definitely find myself recommending the game, even freely acknowledging that it may not be for everyone. After all, what game is?

For those who are interested, you can acquire FTL off of its official website or on Steam. You can also purchase the DRM-free version on GOG, but this version is only available for Windows platforms. Regardless, of where you get it, the game will be $9 until the sale price ends, after which it will price out at a whopping $10. So, act now, or whatever.

What I Played Today: Mass Effect 3: Leviathan!

Posted on by Semtex Skittle

Technically, I played it yesterday.

So, remember how everyone hated the ending to that highly anticipated, trilogy-culminating, pre-order bonanza of a FPS RPG called Mass Effect 3? I do. Later, when Bioware got around to releasing an expanded and updated ending, it seems like only about half of the original ME3 crowd came back to see it. Part of it might have just been exhaustion over the whole ME3 ending saga – it was mostly fatigue that kept me from running to my XBox to plunge into the depths of the new ending. I suspect others are sticking to their guns; they heard that the “new” ending isn’t really new at all, just an expansion on existing events and themes. So they’re not interested. The Indoctrination crowd didn’t find much to love in the new ending, so diehards of that theory or whatever… probably didn’t need to rush back to see things unfold.

Others I suspect are in a third camp. They want an excuse to play the game again, but they don’t really feel like doing Chronos Station and Earth. At least, not as a standalone. It’s not like those missions were some glowing paragon of what ME3 could be. All of the heavy stuff happens earlier, and Earth doesn’t have the fun factor that the final assault on the Collector Base did. It’s kind of a long slog, when you get right down to it. In fact, the whole game is pretty heavy, and I’m not sure it bears back-to-back play-throughs with as much grace as the previous installments did. I, at least, noted Mass Effect lover and apologist, have completed Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 probably a dozen times each. I have completed Mass Effect 3 once. Just once. I continued to play the multiplayer occasionally, keep that readiness nice and blue, and waited patiently for a time when I would feel the urge to play the game once again.

It turns out that the urge returned when BioWare finally dropped their first single player content DLC: Leviathan.

Leviathan starts with the story of a man named Dr. Bryson, a scientist on the Citadel who is investigating celestial phenomenae. Specifically, he is rooting around through old monster legends and other such seeming nonsense for any kind of clues that might have survived from a previous cycle about the Reapers. In the course of this research he discovered something that is – potentially – even more interesting… an artifact that is linked to a space monster they’ve dubbed ‘Leviathan’. A creature so powerful that it was capable of downing a Reaper in single combat. Something that seems impossible. But, Bryson does have this weird glowy artifact, and he seems pretty sure… and, since we’re completely desperate for even the tiniest possible edges at this point in our seemingly unwinnable battle against extermination… I eventually acceded that it was probably worth tracking down Bryson’s assistant, who went to an asteroid mining facility in order to follow up on a possible second artifact. Needless to say, hilarity ensues, and Shepard embarks on several missions, broken up by return visits to the lab for analysis, before the climactic scene on an eerie ocean planet about which the less I say, the better.

In terms of DLC, Leviathan is no Lair of the Shadow Broker. While it does appreciably expand on some story elements of Mass Effect 3 (specifically, you gain some fun information about the Reapers. This DLC answered one of my most irritatingly nagging questions about the background of the Reapers. Fun!) and it provides a handful of fun missions – the ocean planet, it’s worth stating, is a gorgeous backdrop for the mission that takes place there – it lacks the character driven tension of Lair. I would put it more on par with the “Arrival” DLC for ME2. You don’t have much reason to get invested in the new characters you meet, and so they feel disposable in a way the core cast never would have. That having been said, I don’t know how many of you returned to ME2 to complete Arrival, but I felt it was a well-spent $10, and I feel the same way about Leviathan. It has a good atmosphere, a couple of cool weapons and new modifications for your gun toting pleasure, and a very impactful revelation at the end.

Incidentally, if you have any interest in ME3 single player DLC at all, there’s extra incentive to acquire Leviathan. Fan interest has seemed much less driven for ME3 DLC than in previous titles… presumably because the ending to the game is as final as it is. Shepard’s story can’t continue, it can only expand.

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Gaming!

Posted on by Semtex Skittle

Unfortunately, this particular editorial can’t pass without some background information being passed around first. The story is a sad one at times, but I think you’ll find the resolution as satisfying as I have! Do let me know!

Some of you may have heard of the popular webcomic Penny Arcade. A much smaller chunk of you are probably familiar with the two games that Penny Arcade released in the year 2008, parts one and two of On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness… a story which blended Penny Arcade’s unique style of humour and its unique visual style with a modern RPG engine to create a new gaming experience. Most of you who bought the first two games are further familiar with the catastrophic announcement in 2010 that Hothead Games was going to proceed with the Deathspank franchise over producing the third title in the Penny Arcade series… and that… the Penny Arcade series was cancelled.

Ouch.

Double ouch to people who really enjoyed the first two titles, and were looking forward to the conclusion of the story of Tycho Brahe and Jonathan Gabriel.

But then in 2011, a ray of hope emerged. Zeboyd Games, producers of such titles as Breath of Death VII: The Beginning and Cthulu Saves the World, had signed on to the project. In development? Rain-Slick 3. Only now, instead of using Penny Arcade’s comic book visual style and a more modern RPG engine, we were going to experience a fully pixelated 16-bit treatment of the story and the world, and it was to be released in a more Indie fashion.

Fine by me!

Now, in mid-2012… the new game is here. I have played it. And I would like to tell you all about it.

Rain-Slick 3 continues the story immediately after it left off at the end of Rain-Slick 2. Our heroes Tycho Brahe and Jonathan Gabriel, of the Startling Developments Detective Agency, have slain two Gods, and by a prophecy spoken by Tycho’s own father, this has brought the world to the brink of oblivion. Unfortunately, it seems, we must balance that against the fact that the ongoing presence of these ancient Gods has infused a great amount of evil into the world, from wicked hobos and rampaging mimes to the occurrence of ghosts, ghouls, and other supernatural critters. Railing against this destiny, Tycho and Gabe enlist the help of a head in a jar and a mysterious woman detective who shares a past connection with Tycho, in an effort to halt the ongoing conflict before it spirals out of control.

The gameplay is pure 16-bit RPG. Characters use a job system which is not unlike a pared-down version of that used in any Final Fantasy game, with jobs having certain special abilities gained as they level up. However, Rain-Slick wants to be fun for the player, and actually doesn’t allow you to grind (enemy groups disappear when defeated, and do not return!), so un-used jobs level up concurrently with those currently equipped, albeit at a slower rate, and your characters can equip multiple jobs with no penalty. Combining a useful suite of skills can create truly devastating fighters, so there is definitely a strategic aspect to how you equip your jobs, and how you choose equipment which can either cover weaknesses or heavily accent strengths. It gives a decent feel of customisation to the player, which is otherwise somewhat lacking as the player’s own avatar is absent from the game’s cast of characters (although referenced several times as having participated in previous events) and the game plays like a traditional RPG – there are no Mass Effect style conversation wheels to be found here.

The game’s charm is in its simplicity, and its storytelling. Although the story is predictably broken up by long chunks of combat-heavy dungeon, it remains infused with the humour and ability of the guys from Penny Arcade – not insubstantial! – and hints of that artwork style, used for character portraits and enemy models. Of particular amusement value are the names of enemies, always accompanied by a short description, which really rekindle the feel of the first two games. Zeboyd has done a marvelous job in continuing the saga, even though the game plays absolutely differently from the original two titles.

If you still have any interest in this series, I highly encourage a purchase! Rain-Slick 3 is available on Xbox Live Marketplace or Steam, or through the Penny Arcade store. The official site also notes that it should become available for iOS and Android in the future, and Penny Arcade notes the possibility of free updates to expand upon the core game. For a pittance of $5, this game is likely to do nothing but impress you from start to finish.

The Magic of Duels of the Planeswalkers

Posted on by Semtex Skittle

 

A couple of years back I was bored one afternoon and browsing the XBox Live Marketplace. I didn’t have any real expectation of finding a game that would get me through the afternoon, let alone something that would have real staying power for me, and I would revisit time and again. When I saw that there was a Magic the Gathering game, it was suspicions that became aroused, not interest. Out of a kind of morbid curiosity I selected the game and read a little more into it, saw that a couple of my friends had played it, and that it seemed to be a self-contained engine of a game, and not simply another attempt to sell me Magic the Gathering Online in a repackaged form (don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against MTG:O. In fact, it’s a clever idea to reach people who either don’t have an active local Magic scene, or hate their local Magic scene, but if I had money to waste on Magic, I personally would do it at my local comic store).

But, oddly, the complaint that I keep hearing from people about Duels of the Planeswalkers (aside from some more quantitative complaints, which I’ll get into) is that it’s a self-contained thing, not a beautifully rendered amalgamation of all Magic ever.

…Well, duh.

You may bring whatever expectations you wish into your gaming experiences, but I find it’s better to try and keep things a little bit in perspective. For a $10 XBox Live Arcade title – a game that by definition is not a full retail game – you are expecting a full pool of Type II cards, a fully operational deck builder, and carte blanche to build as many decks as you like and play them against other humans? How much money does that privilege cost in real life? If some quickly-researched netdecking can be believed, a couple hundred bucks will buy you a top end deck in the current meta (and someone bought those cards at $4 for each randomized pack or whatever at retail, let’s not forget). Let’s say each ranked DCI event costs another $7 as an entry fee. So for one singular deck, you must expend hundreds of dollars, and much of that income reaches Wizards of the Coast. Then, if you wish to change decks, you’re likely to need more cards. Wizards will release new expansions, and you will need still more cards. All of this generates revenue for the company that is printing the game (and all of the creative people behind its design, etc.) and you honestly approach Duels of the Planeswalkers with the expectation that it’s going to just replace the CCG model forever?

Come on.

So now that that soap box moment is out of the way, let’s talk about the game. 2013 is the latest upgrade to the now-yearly franchise. Much like regular Magic’s Type II environment, DotP can be seen as a sealed ‘block’ of decks of cards, and it evolves year by year. The game-play improvements in 2013, then, are very slight, since the game of Magic hasn’t changed much. The most meaningful one is the long-awaited ability to manually select your own lands to tap for Mana instead of letting the CPU select them for you (the CPU attempts to do this intelligently, but unfortunately, the CPU has no idea what it’s doing). The main difference is, therefore, the entirely new pool of decks that players can customize and compete with. The game launched with 10 available decks which come with a basic pool of 35 cards (plus the necessary land to make the deck function of course) and an additional 30 unlockable cards. The cards are unlocked – unfortunately – one by one, by winning duels, or if you’re lucky enough to be playing the console versions, by the purchase of Deck Keys (those cost about $1 of your real money each) which completely unlock the deck in question. This represents a large increase in possible customization over the selection offered by 2012.

The decks themselves are primarily monochrome, which is a shame. I understand that Wizards probably sees DotP as a tool to draw people into the world of Magic: The Gathering either on or off line, hoping to gain more lifetime players who are eager to experience the full game. However, many players do want to enjoy DotP as a game in its own right, and while monochrome decks are easier to play and make a decent introduction, the truth is that the Magic decks you’re going to see even at a local Friday Night Magic tournament are going to include a lot of paired colours for a simple reason – each colour is deliberately designed with shortcomings. Black has access to many easy fire-and-forget creature destruction spells and no enchantment removal at all. White has only a tiny splash of creature removal (and each of their ‘removal’ cards has a drawback printed on the card!) but many good cards for destroying enchantments or artifacts. If you combine the two, you can have both of those strengths, and cover for the weaknesses, at the expense of a deck that can be less reliable (since you must now possess two different colour resources) and harder to play. The trade-off is almost always worth it.

Hopefully DLC (it’s already in the works, of course!) will expand a little bit on this, and throw in some more two-colour decks (and a few fewer absolutely atrocious 3-colour decks. Please?).

As for the Planechase mode, I haven’t got much to say. I’ve never liked Planechase because it can really take a long time to play a single game of it, so I’ve avoided testing it extensively. I can say that it works just like I remember it working in real life, and it can definitely be fun if you have the patience to stick with it. The unpredictable and powerful effects of the different twisting Planes can really throw a traditional match-up on its head. Combined with the inevitable chaos of FFA multiplayer, and you definitely have a format with legs – no two games of Planechase will ever be exactly the same.

I suggest that you think of Duels as a Magic format much like Captains or, frankly, Type II… and enjoy it for what it is; a closed Magic experience that doesn’t cost you a lot of cash out of pocket to play. The added levels of customization (regrettably, still not the ability to pick how many lands your deck has in it. Grrr!) make the environment more varied than ever (mind you, I did not suggest the environment was balanced. It’s much too early to speak on that) so it’s definitely a game that’s got some depth if you’re willing to take the time to learn the format and delve into its own quirks and strategies.

The game reportedly suffers from numerous bugs. I have not encountered any that are more severe than the ‘mild annoyance’ variety, but I suspect there are uglier ones to be found in those innumerable lines of code somewhere. I wish I could say this was uncommon for releases in 2012, but I try to remain honest when I write these columns.

So there it is. I find Duels to be a fantastic addition to my summer, and I’m more excited than ever to waste countless hours trying to determine the best combination of 60 cards in the fixed pool that makes up my blue deck that will best let me control the decks I’ve seen people playing this week. Oh, and if you pick it up, do try it out with a friend in Two-Headed Giant at least once. It’s riotously fun.