The Podcats: SURPRISE
Gaming is full of suprises. As Gomer Pyle would say: “Surprise, surprise, surprise!”
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REVIEW: BORDERLANDS
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on: PS3, PC. Developed by Gearbox. Published by 2k Games.
So Borderlands is one of those games that shouldn’t. It shouldn’t have sold as well as it has. It shouldn’t be as much fun as it is. But it is. Gearbox, known previously for Brothers in Arms and a lot of good porting work had been showing the game for quite a while before a massive revamp in art style took place. Realism was replaced by a unique cel-shaded graphic novel look. And it obviously worked. Even though the games features many similarities with Fallout 3, Borderlands manages to escape many direct comparisons by being it’s own beast.
So you’re on this planet Pandora (Seems to be a lot of that going around these days), and while it’s a failed colony of sorts, you can’t help thinking that you’re playing Fallout 3 with better gunplay. In fact, it’s like the bastard offspring of Fallout 3, Mad Max and Firefly. It’s an open world first person shooter with a decent RPG feel so levelling whores (which, since WoW and CoD4, is almost everyone). So you pick one of four characters- the usual soldier, sniper, engineer, chick with super powers, etc and off you go, going from mission to mission (and a few side missions) looking for The Vault. You can play it by yourself or party up with up to 3 other players to explore the world and kill and loot to your heart’s content like all good social experiences. Most believe that’s the way to play this game but I concentrated on single player. Me being the solitary loner that I am, I played the game all the time thinking of the sling and arrows I suffered as a child and how I burned them all and pissed on their remains and… anyhoo.
The world of Pandora is a cel-shaded desert full of wackos and doof doof droids. You visit someone who gives you a mission, follow the way point to your mission, beat it, and then return to the mission giver to collect your reward either in the form of experience points or money or hopefully both. Missions are varied with some kill all of the xxx here, some collect all of the yyy (which usually means killing some xxx along the way) or make your way to zzz, kill aaa after you’ve killed all of the xxx). In other words, it can get just a tad repetitive after 10+ hours which is why the co-op would really lift this game if it’s an option open to you.
The game is put together well and has a fairly polished feel. Levelling and using the menus are nice and easy with a controller though I can’t help feel the checkpoint system and save system needs some work. Several times I saved a game and the game didn’t restart from the last checkpoint I was at. Another thing to note: this game respawns enemies. So when you leave Fyrestone, your jumping-off point, expect the same two or three bandits to attack you from exactly the same spots. This does tend to make the game more tiresome than it needs to be, but it least means that there will always be something to kill to get more XP. That said, the enemies scale with you, meaning it’s easy enough to go wherever you like and do missions in almost any order. The mission briefings even tell you what level you should be at and the difficulty of each mission before you make the attempt. A few corners may have been cut with animations, as briefings tend to be a text screen but the text is full of a wry sense of humour. It might just be the cel shading but this game reminds me somewhat of XIII from the PS2/ Xbox era (one of those first of a franchise games that never went any further.
Traversing the large world is made easier when relatively early on, you gain access to vehicles. While these may control like a golf cart driven by a drunken one-legged midget with blisters on his feet, they offer a decent amount of firepower to make mincemeat of respawning foes in encampments. You can get some sick air with these on ramps with your boost enabled. Just like Pedro.
Of course, one of the big draws are all the weapons you collect in this game, somewhere in the order of 3+ million. And some are good and others not so much, so you can drop them, buy them or sell them at vending machines around the world. You can buy upgrades to the capacity of the weapons and even upgrade how many you can carry and have equipped at once. There are lots of guns in this game. A lot. There are more guns in this game than there are HDTV owners who know how to change aspect ratios when watching old movies (“Say, Honey. Doesn’t Orson Wells look a lot fatter on this new TV?”).
Cel-shaded or not, the game has a unique vibe in its presentation, despite a few blurry textures here and there. The world looks like an early 90′s graphic novel come alive, the framerate is mainly solid and the audio presented well, if you can stomach the comic accents. The game could have used a slightly less old fashioned looking menu system and a bit less repeated dialogue (YES, I UNDERSTAND YOU ARE DANCING. THANKS FOR REMINDING ME, AGAIN)
It’s nice to see Gearbox try something other than trying to convince us Brothers in Arms is a popular, fun-to-play franchise. The difference is, this is fun. Is it essential? No, but if you have a lull in your schedule and can time it to coincide with a friend in the same predicament, give Borderlands a shot.
Controller1.com Rating 2/3
Now Playing: Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time
My history with the Ratchet and Clank Franchise has been solid. Although I wasn’t mad keen on the 2002 original, which I thought was a bit overlong and difficult, it did come out in a year with a lot of really solid platformer games and acquitted itself well. A year later R&C2 came out and was much better and to this day is still my favourite of the series. Another year, another installment, perhaps not as great as R&C2 with its focus of multiplayer action over the single player campaign, but still good. I skipped the arena-based Gladiator game and the Clank only game but did give the PSP version of Size Matters a go and enjoyed the first PS3 effort, Tools of Destruction. But for some reason, I have found, despite the obvious quality and ingenuity you find in a Ratchet game (I won’t say Insomniac games because I found the Resistance games a let down), this one hasn’t grabbed me at all.
It’s very likely that it’s just a bad time for me to be playing a R&C game or that I’ve outgrown the series and genre (I also haven’t gotten much further in Super Mario Bros Wii, either). It’s also that the R&C games, whilst tinkering with the edges, are basically exactly the same as the 2002 original in terms of structure. Oh sure you upgrade your weapons slightly differently, but it really is the same game. Maybe the sub-Futurama setting has just gotten stale for me. The gameplay itself is still good but there’s something about the grind in this game that I’m not able to look forward to. Now I’d just finished Assassin’s Creed II (which I loved), am playing MW2- which I mostly love and moving on to Borderlands next, which I have no idea about and is a lot more grindey than a R&C game. But I just can’t do A Crack in Time at this time. The quality is there but spirit is just not willing in this case. Maybe when there’s a lull in new releases mid year I can come back and try again.
So with the disappointment with this R&C game, and Mass Effect 2 another week away and a 4 day break off work (with a public holiday on Tuesday, why the fuck wouldn’t I use a leave day?), I needed something to play in the interim. I did have Borderlands ordered a few weeks back but that fucker looked like it was never going to ship so I canned the order despite the low price. But four days with only MP MW2 would drive me mad. The last two 2009 games I had any interest in playing were Borderlands and The Saboteur. Both original IP’s, both from sorta respected developers. Borderlands was an unexpected hit and Saboteur an unexpected failure that still hasn’t triggered much discounting. I was more keen on Saboteur, seeing as how I enjoyed most of the open world games I played in 2009 other than the first GTA expansion (Funny how the only GTA style game I didn’t like in 09 was GTA). But Borderlands was on special and Saboteur wasn’t. Borderlands was in the store last night and Saboteur wasn’t. Saboteur will just have to wait until the inevitable 2010 lull (everyone goes on about how Q1 2010 will be huge, but not all that much is scheduled for Q2 and Q3) and a nice discount.
I’m still somewhat iffy on Borderlands. It’s a coop game and I have no intention of playing it coop. It’s an RPG with grinding etc, and I normally hate those. But I have found RPG’s with more SF backdrops can appeal to me. I didn’t click with Oblivion but loved Fallout 3. I never played Neverwinter Nights but loved Knights of the Old Republic and the original Mass Effect. With ME2 out, I’m stoked for it. But all the time i was playing Fallout 3, I was thinking how dated this made a lot of what was in Mass Effect. Let’s see how Bioware has responded. Let you know in a week or two.
One last bit of website news. We’ve moved into a new studio for recording The Podcats. It’s less echoey that the room we’ve recorded in for the last six months (and yes it is a functioning, if poorly located audio studio). It is apparently a temp location so we might be moving again in 6 months or we may not. Management inertia is like that. It’s a better space for our purposes but it has a caveat, it’s not set up to focus test games (other than PC titles, or handhelds for obvious reasons) so expect fewer Focus Test-style shows and more chat.
Review: Assassin’s Creed II
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PC, PS3. Developed by Ubisoft Montreal. Published by Ubisoft.
In 2007, Ubisoft released Assassin’s Creed, a much hyped open world game set during the Crusades. Known before release equally for producer Jade Raymond’s appealing smile and interesting premise, the game received mixed reviews and sold like gangbusters anyway. Despite the problems (a very by the numbers mission system and repetition), a sequel was assured and two years later, we have Assassin’s Creed II.
Pic- Ezio Auditore- Assassin, lover, pickpocket. Hey! My wallet!
Assassin’s Creed II builds on the strong fundamentals from the original game in a way not seen often enough in videogames. Desmond is now free of Abstergo and working with a fish lipped Kristen Bell avatar and Switch from the Matrix and Wesley Windom Pryce from Angel, using their own Animus to delve into the world of the Templars. Here, Desmond enters the mind of Ezio Auditore, a Renaissance lad-about-town in 15th century Florence. Ezio becomes an Assassin and immediately sets off on a quest of revenge, intrigue and adventure. Make no mistake, this is firmly rooted in the world of Ezio with the ‘modern world’ only coming into a play a few times.
The free-roaming and combat have been refined slightly- they were pretty well done in the first game but polished a bit more here. You have high profile and low profile actions. Low profile means walking and gently pushing people out of the way, high profile means parkour, sprinting and battle and being badder-assed than Charles Bronson on a Jest Ski. It also will pique the interest of guards- they were profiling even back then. Climb on the roof and the fuckers will hunt you down like a dawg. You will gather an array of weapons throughout your playtime such as hidden knives, daggers, swords, etc and can earn money to buy them from Blacksmiths in each town. You can also buy better armour as you progress, change the colour of your robes, buy maps and even paintings to display in your villa (more later).
So if you played the first game you know how it all works. Here you don’t need to go to the Assassin’s Guild in order to be given a target, it happens far more organically. There’s more of a story being told, even if it’s the same deal- kill ‘x’ targets bit it doesn’t feel anywhere as quantized as the original game. Unlike the first one, missions are more asymmetric in that you don’t have three towns each rigidly cut up into three quarters and there are the same numbers of each type of mission in each area. Here you visit half a dozen locations but some are larger and more important than others. You will be spending most of your time in Florence and Venice with some sojourns to other places such as Tuscany, Forli and your family Villa in Monteriggioni.
Story missions are far more varied this time around with a good mix of things to do. Early on at least, you will will want to earn some money so side quests are useful if you want to be a courier, assassinate someone for money, beat-up a straying husband or race someone.
Pic- Ezio hangs out with his homes
If you don’t feel like doing that, the world is ridden with treasure chests, maps of which are available from art dealers. There are many many things to collect such as feathers for your catatonic mother, but most interesting are the six tombs which are necessary for the story’s resolution but not part of the main quest. Some tombs focus on combat, some on puzzles and others on tricky platforming. This mix of things to do and collect means you can spend quite a lot of time in this world or sneakcraft. Another of the non-optional collectibles are the codex pages, which help you on your quest via health and equipment upgrades from your friend, Lenny DV. The beauty of ACII is that the game gives you enormous freedom and lots of ways to achieve your goal (and hide from the law afterward). You can blend with crowds, hire mercenaries, thieves and courtesans to lure guards away, use bombs to get in close to an objective, etc. It’s a well designed game in almost every way. Just one question. WHY COULDN’T YOU HAVE DONE THIS TWO YEARS AGO, UBISOFT ?!?!
Combat has many options such as being able to block, dodge, disarm enemies, etc. But you don’t need half of them since you can have so many health boosts that you can get by with just pressing the same attack button over and over if that’s your bag. I suppose if you want more of a challenge, don’t upgrade your medicine pouch’s carrying ability at the tailor.
Since you earn money, one of the things you can do is upgrade the town of Monteriggioni. Why? Your renovations increase the value of the town and as Lord of the manor, you earn money this way. Later in the game you earn so much from missions and finding treasure and your rental income from the villa exceeds what you need to stock up on consumables like medicine, poison and the like that you can also end up collecting artworks. And that all adds to the brilliant atmosphere conjured by UbiMon. You feel like you’re there so much that some gamers have taken to playing the game with Italian audio on. This option does also cancel out Kristen Bell’s voice in the modern scenes, and unfortunately, Uncharted Guy.
Uncharted 2 has garnered many awards for beautiful graphics but I think ACII is right up there with it’s open world that’s not only technically brilliant but gorgeous to look at. The only major graphical sin is some fairly obvious pop-in when moving though the cities, even with the games fantastic draw distance (evident when you synchronize on a viewpoint). The framerate is smooth throughout though the latter stages of the game (like many games) do tend to have some areas where scripting and cutscenes seems somewhat rushed.
The sound is also worthy of consideration as it’s very slickly produced and although there’s still way too much repetition from some of the NPC’s, it’s not as bad as the first game where you had the exact same lines been repeated in different accents depending on which area you were in. I do know Luigi the fish merchant can’t be beaten for prices or the freshness of his catch. That much I have learned from this game. Here, almost everyone has an Italian accent, mostly convincing ones at that. And no matter what language you play the game in, the script features copious amounts of Italian dialogue which is why the subtitles come in (I did think the line “what, no fucking ziti?” was out of place). Ezio may sound like a reject from The Godfather but it never grates the way Altair’s bland American accent did in the first game. Ezio has passion and sensitivity. Altair was a cock. Of course, in the few short present days scenes outside of the Animus we have the voices of Kristen Bell and Nolan North AGAIN (we was also Prince of Persia and Drake and Shadow Complex guy).
Pic- Of course, Ezio is unlikley to appear in the next game so here he is carrying his stuff home in a cardboard box after he was let go.
If Uncharted 2 hadn’t been so great, I could have seen this is as a GOTY 2009 quite easily. Why? It’s a very good game that fixes almost everything that was broken in the first game. ACII is a must play.
Controller1.com rating 3/3
Video: Assassin’s Creed II Video Review
Today Controller1.com presents a video review of Assassin’s Creed II via the medium of interpretive dance
Review: Canabalt
Lisvender reviews Canabalt…
Available on iPhone and as a Flash game for web and Flash capable devices.
I thought that Gamespot was being pretty edgy when they picked the fringe title Demon’s Souls to win their Game of the Year award, but then I thought, “Wait! They still got it wrong!”
Canabalt should have won it. It’s a simple game: you run, and you jump, and that’s it. You don’t even press anything to run. You touch anywhere on the screen to jump. It was the best game of 2009.
This is just my opinion, you know. You should know that my personal video game Hall of Fame is full of weirdos like Canabalt. My favorite game of 2007 was Shark! Shark! for the Mattel Intellivision, a precursor to PopCap’s Feeding Frenzy. My favorite game of all time is Total Carnage by Midway, which is an ultraviolent shooting game that can be played from start to finish in an hour. The only GOTY in there that swims with the hype-currents is Fallout 3, though I’m only talking about the original game: the out of the box version without none of the vestigial DLC tainting it. It excels all on its own, though it’s a tad easy.
The fact is that every time I start playing Canabalt, I have a hard time stopping. It’s a game that doesn’t end until you die, and then, all you have to do to start playing again is touch the screen. There is no loading or screen transition; the game simply starts again and you play it some more.
When you start playing, a little man in a business suit appears in a hallway in a tall office building. He runs to the right, crashes over an office chair and a box, and then plunges out of the window. The game world is bleakly gray. Its limited shades make the game look like it should be on a first-generation Game Boy. The little guy lands on the rooftop of a neighboring building and continues running to the right. Soon he runs out of rooftop to run on, and you, the player, must make him jump so he doesn’t fall. You simply touch the screen to do this. The longer you touch the screen, the higher he jumps. As the little man lands on successive rooftops and continues his dash, his speed increases, and it becomes trickier to keep him under control. Your job is to keep him from dying for as long as possible. On some tries you’ll succeed at this for a long time. On other tries you’ll last only for a few seconds. The game is randomized, so there’s no memorization allowed here. Your only assets are your reflexes.
Canabalt has no real story beyond what is shown during play. The game’s background shows a skyline with weird, enormous figures stalking about, plumes of smoke rising, and spacecraft zipping by at high speeds. Combined with the player-character’s insane rooftop run, the backgrounds make it clear that something terrible is happening here. Backgrounds in video games are powerful things, and it’s sad that 3D games, with their dynamic cameras, can’t really capture that bystander effect the way that 2D games can. Games like Half-Life 2 have tried, but they always have to contrive some kind of barrier, like a grumpy policeman or a line of rocks, to corral the player and hold them away from the sights they’re not meant to touch. Canabalt’s story is not entirely clear, of course, but it doesn’t have to be, and that’s what makes it so great. There is no text explaining what’s going on or why your character is motivated to leap across a series of rooftops. That’s left up to your imagination, where it’s sure to be more exciting than anything a programmer could dream up.
On random occasions, while playing Canabalt, you might hear a thump. That means, “Watch out, because a volatile chunk of metal is going to crash into the next building.” Touch that volatile chunk of metal, and your little guy blows up. Sometimes the buildings in your path are so tall that you can only make it through them by jumping precisely through a narrow window. There are boxes strewn about on some rooftops that will slow your little man down if he crashes into them, and sometimes you might want him to crash into them, either because you want to keep him at a reasonable speed, or because jumping the boxes will screw with your rhythm. Sometimes the building you’re running across will crumble beneath your feet, leaving you only a sliver of time to clear the next gap. None of these environmental features are preset. They just appear sometimes. There are some players who despise this kind of randomness in games. I eat it up. You see, I don’t dig “performance games,” games that require hours of practice to play perfectly, the way a complex song demands practice from a musician. Mirror’s Edge, probably the only game that can be fairly compared to Canabalt, is a performance game. Its levels require time, memorization, and a multitude of player deaths to master, and while I’m sure that skill is involved in completing it, it seems to me that players would benefit more from patience and perseverance. Any game with level design is going to require some memorization to master, but when the game becomes less about playing around and more about performing well, you might as well give it up and start playing Dragon’s Lair. Given the choice between playing Dragon’s Lair and playing Tetris, I’d pick Tetris any day.
There were a lot of good games out this year, and it might seem strange that I would prefer to play a 2D, one-button, sprite-based iPhone game over something like Uncharted 2. The fact is, though, that I really do play it more than any other game that came out last year. I think it’s because Canabalt excels at the few simple things it does. Its 2D, sprite-based graphics are sharp, evocative, and tell a fascinating story. Its single control functions flawlessly, making possible a wide range of jumps to deal with the game’s obstacles. Most interestingly, it doesn’t end; it cannot be won, and it’s only finished when you’re finished with it. It is not a game that you can consume and then put away. There are leaderboards, if you consider getting a high score to be a manner of winning, but you’re not thinking about them when you’re in the heat of the run. In Canabalt, all that matters is the game, and its many, many thrilling moments of unscripted death-defiance which change every time you play. I don’t know when we’re going to get another game like this; you’d better start playing it now.
Controller1.com rating 3/3
- Lisvender
Controller1.com THE PODCATS: 2010
A quick look at the games we know about for 2010. Completely Mass Effect 2 free as well.
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