Monthly Archive for July, 2008

I have been told that Ico is somewhat seen as a gem in the game industry by designers, and that it’s a “secret card” one could pull out during an interview as the game is unique and provides a great experience from its minimalist design approach.

Since Shadow of the Colossus is seen as a “spiritual prequel” to Ico, I was very interested in where the story would continue from where SOTC had left off. With rumors of a sequel to the series coming to the PS3, I had planned to get this game and play it before the next iteration came out. Luck would have it that I picked it up used (in mint condition!) at a GameStop while browsing to kill some time.

Overview

From Wikipedia:

The player takes on the role of Ico, a young boy born with a pair of horns, who must escort a princess named Yorda safely out of a castle without her being captured by the shadowy figures that prowl nearby or being killed by the castle’s numerous environmental hazards.

Overall Reaction (Possible Spoilers Below)

Story
The story itself was an interesting story. From the ending of Shadow of the Colossus, we have a baby boy who has small horns growing out of his head. (Presumably a transformation of Wander.) As the story goes, there were boys who were born with horns every few generations, and that those boys were seen as harbingers of trouble and misgiving to the community. After the boy’s horns had grown large enough, the community thought it was time to sacrifice him. They bring him to a castle, and lock him up. He soon breaks free of this castle, and finds his way until he gets to a spiral staircase in which he had a previous dream about. He rescues a girl, Yorda, whom does not speak the same language that he does. He knows that he needs to get out of this castle, and takes it upon himself to bring Yorda with him along his quest for escape.

The story itself is easy to follow, and there is a bit more dialogue that Shadow of the Colossus, but with only three characters, more dialogue is not really needed.

What I really enjoyed about this game was the minimalism (no GUI), and incredible amount of puzzle diversity when the developers did not introduce much in the way of various tools, or variables to the equation. The game stayed very fresh throughout, without much interaction with similar puzzles from the past.

Lastly, Having played the “prequel” to this game before, I was able to re-enjoy some of the aspects of SOTC, reliving some of the story, understanding some of the puzzles that took me awhile to get not having played Ico (specifically the stick and fire / pitbull colossi), and I got to see the two games to come together complimenting each other really well.

Weaknesses (What I’d Change)

Options
My first issue with the game happened before I even got to start it. I wasn’t able to get my hi-def cables working with the PS2, and I wasn’t able to see the game clearly until I had gone back to the composite cables. This frustrated me slightly, and there were no options within the game to control widescreen, progressive scan, or even controls. I got used to it soon enough, but I generally use an inverted look when playing a game, and it was a pain in the ass to have to remember this each time I needed to look around. (Which happened often enough to remind me of the frustration of the whole ordeal).

Camera
The camera at times provided to be a huge annoyance, as it seemed that the camera anchored itself a good ten feet away from Ico, yet wouldn’t let you look past Ico’s field of vision, which was a perspective you weren’t looking through. In enclosed spaces, close hallways, or when Ico for whatever reason was near a wall when I was trying to glance around, I would find myself moving him just to get a better look.

Colors
I love the coloring in Ico, and the mood it creates, but I absolutely hate the fact that it has created some sort of bland-movement in next-gen games, pushing these games that could break beautiful boundaries of color and vivid presentation.

Controls
This goes hand in hand with some other complaints, but with two unbound buttons (not that all of them need to be filled up), but the lack of customization abilities and camera controls in this game were ultimately lacking

Hints
There was one puzzle in the game, probably about two hours in, that I was stuck on for a good 45 minutes before I gave up and looked up a little help on an online walkthrough. It turns out, I needed to swing on the chain I was dangling from. Having needed no use of swinging previously, and no inclination of how to do that, one would have only found out that such a solution to the puzzle existed by frustratingly looking online for a walkthrough like myself, or having looked through the instruction manual, which had the move listed within the book. (Who reads these manuals anyway?) Thankfully, this information was not in vein, as it was necessary to solve a few more puzzles later on. If there could be some way of detecting when a puzzle was started, and if it was being attempted for longer than x amount of minutes (say, 25-30) that some onscreen hints come away to provide you some help along the way.

Move to Europe
Generally Europe gets the shaft when it comes to console releases, etc, but not this time. The European version of Ico had a multitude of features for more replay value, including:

The second playthrough bonuses present in the EU and Japanese releases are removed, as is the expanded dialogue (the subtitles that were indecipherable runes the first time through are now translated), the option to have a second player control the princess, a secret weapon which resembles a lightsaber from Star Wars, and the option to play the entire game in the “film effect” seen in certain cut scenes. There were also a few changes made to the game itself, such as the shadow generation points and the AI. Most notably, the Waterfall and Windmill puzzles are more complex in the Japanese and European versions than the US version. The original box artwork, designed by Fumito Ueda, is a homage to the surrealist painter de Chirico (compared to The Nostalgia of the Infinite) and helped to add to the minimalist feel of the game.

The box art is much cooler in my opinion, having someone control Yorda could have made some of the puzzles a bit easier/faster/different, and the Windmill puzzle was memorable, but not necessarily difficult.

Animations and the slippery Yorda
Animations in the game were lacking, and this is evident throughout, but especially in the fact that EVERY TIME Yorda jumps after you, she slips, falls, Ico catches her, and pulls her up. In an earlier demo version of the game – Ico has the ability to let go of Yorda when they had made contact with her hands. I know for sure that sometimes I wouldn’t have minded letting go.

Quick Ending
While I’m not asking for the game to be any longer (I think the time was just enough to keep me interested), the arc of the story seemed to taper off pretty fast after you fell from the drawbridge. A few easy puzzles and you were back in the castle, kill the queen, game over. You just spent 6-8 hours getting to this point, and even with the descriptions in the booklet, there are 5-6 “sections” of the game, 3-4 of which you accomplish in the last hour. Since this game didn’t give any sort of percentage complete, or concept of how close you were to finishing the game, I wasn’t expecting for everything to jump into place like it did so quickly.

The game has inspired so much throughout today’s games, and plays a pivotal role in how it presented a minimalist game, great puzzles, and a good story, with the smallest amount of bells and whistles to create an entertaining piece of work. I would list this game as a must play to must own, just so you can get a feel from where some games today are truly coming from..

Gears of War is the product of Epic, also the creators of Unreal Tournament 3. It’s yet another space-marine shooter where you take on the role of the very one dimensional Marcus Fenix. The game itself has won quite a few awards, and was one of the first games released on the Unreal 3 Engine. I was personally interested in the game as it was the first third person shooter that I had played, there was a decent amount of hype, and there was co-op campaign. Sadly, the game didn’t live up to the hype for me, and aside of going on a trip and moving into a new apartment, I needed some time to get the bad taste the game gave me out of my mouth.

Overview

From Wikipedia:

The game centers on the soldiers of Delta Squad as they fight to save the human inhabitants of the fictional planet Sera from a relentless subterranean enemy known as the Locust Horde. The player assumes the role of Marcus Fenix, a former prisoner and war-hardened soldier. The game is based on the use of cover and strategic fire for the player to advance through the scenarios; a second player can play co-operatively through the main campaign to assist. The game also features several online game modes for up to eight players.

Overall Reaction (Possible Spoilers Below)
There are plenty of things that Gears does right, and makes the high reviews the game has garnered somewhat understandable. However the things in the game that suck, annoy me so much that I forget the good things time to time, and focus all my energy trying to get around the nuisances. It’s the equivalent of creating a brand new luxury car with some amazing features to boast, then sticking in an incredibly uncomfortable seat and privacy glass for a windshield.

Campaign
For some, The Good Shepherd is seen as one of Matt Damon’s better performances. Maybe it’s because the story is interesting, the cinematography is done well, or maybe its because he’s got about five lines of dialogue. Didn’t these people’s Moms tell them that if they don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all? I think the same goes for decent dialogue. I won’t bother to pop in the game to get to the cutscene, because it’s not worth my time, but there is a scene in the beginning of the game that goes similar to this:

Marine with nasally voice: [Shooting out Helicopter] Hey, aren’t you *the* Marcus Fenix from (some battle)? [More shooting]
Fenix: Yeah.
Marine with nasally voice: Cool! [More shooting]
Fenix: Not really.

What the hell is that? Since when did designing a badass-looking character, and pretending to allude to a darker past through dialogue, creating something resembling a story, or even be an acceptable form of story-telling? Don’t worry, I wont spoil any revelations about Marcus’ personality, character, or history, because the game DOESN’T PROVIDE ANY. Just to humor myself, here’s another quote I remember (paraphrasing again):

Head-Admiral Guy: Fenix, I expect 110% from you!
Fenix: I’m not doing this for you.

Oooh, tough guy. Give me a break.

Then the game sticks you on a 4 hour escapade to find and install some device, that just craps out after you use it. Awesome, give me that time in my life back. There wasn’t even a decent reasoning, or a half-assed gratification of installing the device. All the user got was something similar “Nope, that didn’t work, we need to try something else.”

Like I said, there were a few things I liked about the game. I enjoyed having the freedom to choose which character took a different route to meet up later at, and thought it added some diversity to the experience. This could have potentially expanded a bit more into different jobs (one provides sniper fire, another infiltrates the enemy). I realize this occurred once in the game, but I like sniping, and my brother took that route that time.

I also enjoyed the small additional things you needed to do to keep yourself safe from these maddened darkness bat creatures. Blowing up the propane tanks, and the small area where one player needed to cover the teammate with the flood light was a different, but nice touch. It’s nice to take players out of shoot-em-up mode and force a little teamwork along the way to remind them that they are playing co-operatively.

Back to whining, the ending of this game was boring, anti-climatic, and lame! There is absolutely no trick to beating this boss, other than “shoot him a whole lot” when he’s in the light. At least with one of those spider looking bosses you had a weak point you had to shoot after getting it’s legs away from its mouth. You’d think that there’d be a little bit more thought involved then that in the culmination of the game. Along with the cutscene and the dialogue to set the game up for a sequel – I finished the campaign and said, “that’s it?”

Online Multiplayer Experience
I spent about forty-five minutes trying out the online “experience” of Gears of War, and I will only try it again if I’m doing it with a friend. After that painful, frustrating time had passed, I had been able to join about 4-6 games. Some games I had chosen myself, others I had let the game decide for me through the “quick play” feature. Not only did I often join mid-round, and had to wait a good 2-5 minutes for the round to be over, but I would generally be kicked right away, or after one round.

Granted, I played with comparable finesse to that of Helen Keller, but there was no room for error here. These were the few low-latency servers that I could find to play on, and I was reliving some old nightmares of being the fat kid in gym class. Except this time, you don’t get picked last, you just don’t get to play. The one time I did get to play, I was on a team with players of equal skill level to myself, and the other team was a bunch of friends, who were eating us for breakfast. I think we had a total of 3-4 kills on a 4v4 after five rounds. Painful? Yes. Humiliating? Extremely. Fun? No.

After a few choice words, I put the game back in its case, and either went and played Halo or just got up from my 360 altogether. Not the best sign for a game.

Weaknesses (What I’d Change)

Darwinism Revised
This has been something that’s been around since UT2003, and now that I was buying the game for more than just the online experience, it bothers me. The model designers at Epic seem to think that humans did not evolve from monkeys, but that of our hunchback-turtle brethren. What is up with this model shape, and why does it keep re-appearing in every iteration of the games they stick out. I’m not sure if they’re trying to start a fashion trend here – but its been five years now and no one’s picking it up, consider switching this look around.

Magnetic Concrete
Cover is an incredibly important piece of tactics that you need to work into the game while you’re playing Gears, or you wont be able to get very far. However, I found myself having a hard time either getting Marcus to “attach” himself to a nearby area for cover, or in close quarters, turning the damn ‘magnetics’ off so that I could get through a set of close blocks, or a doorway. I’m sure you can just chalk this one up for inexperience with the game, but it was too frustrating at times to be useful.

Dialogue
While I gave this gripe plenty of justice in the campaign section, I’ll say it again. I would have rather had less dialogue and more for me to fill in the blanks, then the crap that was used for dialogue in the game. Supposedly, the next Gears is “much more emotional” according to the voice of Marcus Fenix – but that’s like saying your house made of Lincoln Logs is technologically more advanced than your alphabet-block house. I hope I eat my words on this one.

Radar System
When you had a downed teammate and you needed to find him, he blended into the surroundings really well. Not only that, but the arrows pointing to them in the circle “radar” were often confusing and didn’t help much. Something closer to a blip-radar ala Halo 3, COD4, CS may have made this work a little bit easier. I mean, you’re in the future aren’t you? The technology for your turtle shells exist, so I’m sure a cooler radar does too.

Visual Reinforcement
This game has headshots, but there’s no real way to know when you get one, other than carefully watching the death animations of the enemy. I wish there was a little more response from the game when you were aiming at key points of the enemy.

Color Choice
There’s a few articles that really explains my gripes with the majority of the next-gen games that are coming out with supposedly “beautiful” graphics and visual pinnacles of gaming graphics. The article says something along the lines of “real is brown”. In these games, there’s this filter of haze over the screen all the time, where you get a reduced color palette and everything is an awful shade of emo. I realize that you’re trying to put the user in a state of mind with the scenery, but color doesn’t need to be the main vessel: you can use the story, NPC and player interaction, and many other tools to provide a sense of unease, loneliness, and impending doom.

Online Match Control
Gears probably has one of the best filtering systems that I’ve seen in a game thus far. I love that you can pick the maps you want to look for, among many other ways to trickle down to finding a game that suits your preferences at the time. However, players should not have the control to kick users from the game if they are not doing anything detrimental to the team – and sucking does not fit into this. If I’m killing my team, or ruining an objective, fine, kick me. But don’t punish me for trying something new out, and trying to adapt to a new style of game online.

Achievements?!
I’ve read the gripes by a few people about the incredibly unattainable achievements that Gears throws out to its players to try to reach. I know that I for one will never go out of my way to get the 1000 GPs that the game offers. At most, I may go back to play it again on Insane with a friend online, but that’s about it. My sympathy goes out to those who spent the hours upon hours of getting the 10,000 kills or something insane thats required, along with the individual gun kills that are required as well. Call of Duty 4’s 1000 GPs were pretty straightforward to get, and Halo 3’s are just hard enough for me to not whine about, and actually look forward to getting the final three online achievements when I do. Gears goes overboard with this, and requires you to dedicate way too much time to it in order to achieve them, that regardless if I think I have a life, receiving the majority of those achievements will remind me that no, no I do not.