An Analogy

When I was younger, I never understood how people could sit there and tell me how they liked the sound of vinyl over that of a CD. I knew that the audio quality of the CD (Digital vs. Analog) was far better than the quality of a vinyl record; a record that would slowly degrade with each listen. I finally did understand it with the help of my own analogy: I still really like the chunky dated graphics of the Playstation and Nintendo 64 era of games.

Now I do not think that the graphic quality of games such as Parasite Eve, Super Mario 64, and Metal Gear Solid is better than that of the current gen, HD mega games. I understand how much the technology has moved on and how dated the Playstation and Nintendo 64 games look when compared to games such as The Last Guardian and L.A. Noire. Yet it is that very dated look that makes me love them. I grew up in this world of blocks and polygon counts, and I gazed out over the pixelated skylines of the 16 bit. It was this that helped rocket my growing love of video games into my consciousness forever. The look of these games is tied to my memories of being a kid, of growing up and living out those carefree days of youth; those same days that I hope to give to my own kids, some day.

I hope that one day my own kids will look back at the games their dad loves, the archaic discs and hunks of plastic to them, and learn to appreciate them. Will the games be so outdated as to be unplayable to them, or will they be like my generation and its love of vinyl? Will the Playstation and Nintendo 64 become the hip things to play, much as the Nintendo and the Super Nintendo is for gamers of my generation? I hope that one day, I get sit down to play through these games and create new memories, with my own family.

Sorrow and the Old West

I wanted to finish Red Dead Redemption sooner rather than later. So a couple of days ago while I was hanging out with my good friend, I decided it was high time I sat down and started my final push to the end. I loaded the game onto my 360 hard drive, and started the old girl up.

Something wasn’t right.

The load screen said something akin to a welcome, almost as if I was starting the game from the beginning. ‘But I was in Mexico’, raced through my mind again and again as the little revolver chamber loaded the game. ‘I just forgot the name of the last mission is all, everything is going to be fine,’ I reassured myself when the screen faded to black. ‘Everything is going to be fine.’

I was wrong. I wasn’t in Mexico; I was walking off the boat in Blackwater. I was at the very start of the game. Everything was not fine.

‘Okay, calm down. Just load your game from the load window, it probably loaded someone else’s file is all. Everything is fine, don’t worry about it.’ So I pause the game, and load up file 2 (the same save slot I have used since I was a kid playing A Link to the Past on my SNES. Always slot 2). Same name, same mission, same disappointment.

It is not like Red Dead is a bad game, far from it. The story is amazing, and the dialog is easily the best I have ever heard in a video game: it’s well written, and superbly executed. The world of Red Dead is interesting, and riding around the country side in search of adventure was/is always a joy. Yet with such a large game, I feel so daunted to have to replay the hours, and hours, and hours I had logged before just to get back to where I left off. Hours and hours to get back to the point where I still have hours and hours to go until the end does not sound like something I feel like doing at the moment; I already have my grind with the recent release of The Firelands, WoW’s new content patch, and my ever growing collection of games.

This is the reason why I do not like people playing my stuff when I am not there. I know it sounds rude, but this is not the first time something like this has happened. Saving over someone’s file is sacrilege, and one would think that Rockstar would have finally (after years) fixed their terrible save system; no one liked it in Grand Theft Auto 3, why does it keep being reused?

One day I will return to the west. And one day, I will finish what I started. Not today, and sure as hell not tomorrow, but one day.

War for Cybertron

War for Cybertron was really not a bad game. While it is not anything ground breaking or amazing, that does not mean that it is not worth your time. If you are a fan of the giant 80s robots and overly dramatic plotlines then transform, roll out, and keep on reading.

At its core, War for Cybertron is your basic third person action/shooter. How it deviates from this framework is the ability to transform at will; instead of being stuck as either a robot or vehicle, you can switch seamlessly between the two with the push of a button. Now your average third person fire fight is interspersed with zipping around the battle field as a car, or soaring through the skies as a jet in attempts to get the drop on your enemies. The transformers themselves are separated into class types (scout, leader, etc.) which affect what type o weapons you start with, and what special moves you can perform when you have collected enough energon.

The story is a cannon entry into the Transformers lore, which is either going to mean something to you or mean absolutely nothing. The game is the story of the original reasons why the Autobots and Decepticons are caught-up in civil war with each other. You get to experience events like the first meeting between Megatron and Starscream, and the rise of Optimus to his position as leader of the autobots. Like I said, you will either love or you have no feelings towards it. That being said, it is geared towards Transformer fans; just saying. You also get to play as fan favourites such as Soundwave, Silverbolt, Optimus Prime, and many more.

The game also has multiplayer, but with no one playing it anymore, I cannot say what it is like. I did play a game of the escalation/horde mode, and it was what you expect that mode to be; fight waves and waves of progressively stronger foes, restock in-between, and see how long you can last.

My one problem with the game is that you can either choose to play as either side whenever, even though there is a clear cut storyline that can easily be followed. This design choice shows its flaws after you finish the Decepticon campaign (the first one when going in order), and then end up fighting the same enemies, yet a different colour, in the Autobot campaign. They even go as far as to introduce the different types of enemies the same way in both campaigns. I just feel that we could have seen more variety in everything from enemies, to encounters if you had no choice but to play the story as it should be told.

That one thing aside, I did really enjoy War for Cybertron. I know that a lot of it has to do with my lifelong love of the Transformers, but it is not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination.

A Killer Robot from the Future is Concerned about Violent Video Games.

If you have not been following the Schwarzenegger v. EMA/Brown v. EMA case that is about to get a ruling this Monday in the United States, then you should turn your attention to Patrick Klepek’s coverage of it over on Giant Bomb. The general gist of the case is this: people are upset about kids playing violent games (understandable), and the Californian state government feels that they can raise your kids better than you can (not so understandable). I am not going to get into any moral debates about this, those have already been had by people who know what they are talking about, but I do want to bring to the forefront something interesting that I noticed about this whole long road.

This whole idea about protecting kids from the evils of video games is very similar, and I mean VERY similar, to the same debate that rage on about music (heavy metal, punk rock, and the like) in the 1980s. While I do agree that an eight year old should not be playing Grand Theft Auto if they cannot handle it, I also think that if your child understands the basic concept of reality vs. fantasy (like my sister did as a child. She would sit in front of the TV when she was about three or so, and would watch Terminator 2 from start to finish), then there should be no problem in what games your child plays. The video game industry has the ESRB and other ratings boards to rate the content of games, and there are already laws in place about selling mature rated games to minors, so what is all the fuss about? If Hollywood is able to rate their films, and enforce their own set of rules, why can policy makers not let the games industry do the same? It is just like art, movies, and music before it; video games are the new evil that the older generations do not, and will never try to understand.

It also bothers me that some people are content to let those in power (be it provincial, state, or federal levels of government) tell them how to deal with their own children. Sure we have to make sure that the media are kids are taking in is appropriate for them (since each child being a unique individual), but that should be the responsibility of parents and not of policy makers.

Let us hope that level heads prevail here, and the governments of the world stop trying to raise everyone’s kids for them.

Portal 2 is Great.

My god, I feel bad for taking this long to finish Portal 2. I do not see how or why people were complaining about the length of this game when it came out; after all was said and done, I was at around 12 hours of play. 12 hours to complete the single player and the co-op multiplayer. How is that a short game?

First and foremost, the story and the writing in this game are of a calibre not seen very often in the world of video games; the only other game that I feel comes close is Red Dead Redemption. I was very impressed by the amount of emotion the animators and the designers were able to get out of the faceless robots. It reminded me of Pixar’s WALL-e in a way, and that to me is the real testament to the design of the robots. The sharp writing, and top notch voice work bring this game to another level of detail rarely seen in the games of today. I would gladly sit back and watch someone play this game so I could really let the storytelling sink in. That is not to say that I did not like playing this game, in fact I quite enjoyed it.

Portal is a puzzle game first and foremost, so it is a rather good thing then that puzzles are great in both the single player and the co-op portions of the game. The single player tests are as good, or even a little better than Portal’s tests and the game forces you to do some abstract puzzle work on most of the late game chambers. I cannot pass judgement on how hard some of the co-op puzzles could be without proper verbal communication as my good friend and I played co-op in the same room. Even then, with the two of us being in the same room we both heavily relied on the ability to paint targets in game to help solve many of the tests. Aside from that, the co-op tests are fun, challenging, and always rewarding.

This game shows how, once again, Valve is at the top of the pack when it comes to storytelling. Whether it is the direct stories of the Portal and Half-Life series, or the indirect stories of Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, Valve is able to create unique and interesting worlds. Let’s hope that this trend continues, and is improved upon in Half-Life 2: Episode 3.

Anzu, The Raven Lord

After I don’t know how long, I finally got my hands on the Raven Lord mount! This mount has been the one thing I have lusted after in the World of Warcraft ever since the Burning Crusade marched across Outlands. Now with it firmly in my mount collection, I need to find something else to go after, something else to farm day in and day out; it is either going to be the Huntsman mount from Kara, or the blue proto-drake from Up. Both of those mounts are rarely seen (especially the blue drake), and collecting mounts is what I do.

Not a huge post, I know, but this is something I have been trying for for so long. So let me have this moment to bask in the glory of finally getting this damn mount. I now ride a god into battle, and show off a new mount in the streets of Orgrimmar.

Why I loved Dead Space 2

Dead Space 2 is to Aliens as Dead Space is to Alien. Both games feature the same creatures, and both are stories of desperate struggles against seemingly impossible odds. The first one built on the fear of being alone (in space, no one can hear you scream) while the second built upon the fear of numbers (this time, it’s war).

Dead Space 2 trades in the solitary ship for the chance to battle the necromorphs on the Sprawl (a space station/city that is built upon the ruins of Saturn’s moon, Titan). Isaac Clark is also no longer the silent hero like Link or Gordon Freeman, instead he is a fully realized character who has to not only battle the crawling chaos aboard the station, but his own inner demons. It was this change in focus from the monsters to the main character, which I never knew Dead Space needed.

Yes the combat is as visceral as the first game, and Isaac’s overall movement through the world has been sped up and made much more fluid, but these are the types of things we have come to expect from sequels; the story is what truly shines in Dead Space 2. I am really happy that Visceral Games, the studio behind the game, knows that there is more to Dead Space than the mindless violence and shooting monsters. The story starts with a bang and does not ever let up; the mental demons Isaac has to face chase him just as much as the re-animated necromorphs do, and his reliance on a mental ill patient (Nolan Strass) paints a grim picture of what Isaac might become. By the end, I did not know if Isaac had lost his mind or not, as reality and his subconscious started to meld together in some very interesting, and quite terrifying, ways. It is this attention given to the world as a whole that raises it above the rest of the horror/action genera (I’m looking at you Resident Evil and Silent Hill).

The cast of characters that you meet along the way are great in moving the story along. I wish that the “main villain” (air quotes), Hans Tiedemann, would have had more of a presence in the game, instead of being a face on a screen or a voice over the radio. The one character that I liked the most, aside from Isaac himself, is Ellie. Without giving too much away, she is another blue-collar worker like Isaac, and she is trying to survive just like everyone else. I loved the fact that she wasn’t a damsel in distress, and that she helps you just as much as you help her. And Isaac himself is a great character, which was something I was quite worried about; it would be hard to develop a character from one who did not speak to a point where he has to now not only speak, but have his own emotions other than the players. I am glad that they choose to give him something to say, because the game’s story greatly benefits from it.

It’s this effort that went into the storytelling that I admire most about Dead Space 2. Everything from the environment, to the way characters look at each other, to the random debris littering the world is used to tell this horror story. It goes to show you can have great, visceral feeling combat and amazingly interactive game play without having to sacrifice the story or the artistic direction. I hope that the inevitable Dead Space 3 continues on this tradition of storytelling, and I hope that the brass over at EA do not force it out the door before it is ready.