Year in Review: 2012

This isn't a top ten list or even a top anything list, or even of games that came out this year. Rather, since there's steam sales going on, it's a round up of everything I can remember playing through this year, divided into categories that will probably piss off what few readers I will ever have. It also links to Steam, which may not be the best way to buy the game. Unfortunately I can't figure out what is ever on sale on Amazon, and GMG scares me. Oh and GamersGate cancelled the one thing I bought off them this season, but I don't blame them for deciding they shouldn't lose thousands of dollars on pricing errors.

So you know, do your research! Or don't, time is your own.

Play Relevant Month: Fatalism of the Orcs, Again?

Sequels, man, sequels. There's still orcs. And they still must die.

OMD2 catches up with its spiritual "competitors" Sanctum and Dungeon Defenders by adding two player coop, adding the oh so sexy sorceress from the first game as a coop partner. I put those two in quotes because OMD1 was fun, those other two, not really. I think coop is largely the biggest and most evident element added to the game, the engine looks slightly better, the music and sounds remain excellent. The art style is cartoonish and the whole game maintains the same irreverence the first one had. You'd notice immediately if you say down to play OMD2 that it wasn't OMD1, but maybe it would take a bit to discern between the two if you were watching a stream or so.

The other big changes to the game are more behind the scenes sort of stuff. There are new map types and new maps, but those sort of blur past you. The game has a much deeper pool of traps to choose from, with more weapons and the addition of a "trinket" item type that has various miscellaneous effects. The biggest change to those is a grindy system where you acquire "skulls" as you did in the first game to upgrade and modify your gear. The first game has one upgrade per trap, whereas this game has a chain of basic upgrades, then a binary selection.

Play Relevant Month: Raging off the Rocks

When Doom was put out all those ages ago, it didn't really have much of a story. Like a good horror film, it presented itself through powerful visuals. It had lighting, it was spooky, you strapped in and off you went against the demon hordes. Game storytelling has moved up a fair amount since I was a little kid all those years ago, but there is something to be said for the Mario, the Sonic, the Doom style of gameplay introduction. You pick it up and go.

Rage on the other hand wants to have a story, so it opens with a cutscene, then what amounts to tutorial. The first time through, I got bored through the tutorial before I could save. I assumed it did the checkpoint autosave thing! So I had to do the start again. I stands out when you think about Doom, where I'd have been knee deep in the dead (hehe) in the same span of time.

The open is so jarring and weird to me besides. Like I said, you have your classic pick up and go games, and then you have storied games. In this, you're a guy in a pod, you wake up suddenly. And then pod opens to like, outdoors? So you think you're in the middle of some wasteland, which I guess you are, except some guy jumps you and bullets start flying seconds later. The pod was right there! If they wanted my delicious meaty bits, why didn't they just open the pod?

And then you're talking to John Goodman. He wants you to help out. For lack of anything else to do, you do. Spoiler: That describes the entire story.

Not So Scary games month: Torchlight 2

Torchlight 2 is a little unique to me in that it marks two events I haven't hit on in ages: First, I actually bothered to join the beta. I'm still a bit sour on the beta, as it feels like beta tests have turned into a way to advertise games. There were more than a few bits of feedback I would have liked to submit and never really found a means to do so besides posting in their forum. Most forums suck real bad, so fuck that. I'm not beta testing your game and coming up with gripes so I can log onto a forum to be told by fanboys my considerations aren't real because they have brain problems.

Second, it's the first game in actual years I bought before release - I think Diablo 2's expansion might be the last one. This isn't really to do with overwhelming excitement - four pack for $15 a head enticed one of my friends. He bought it, and according to his steam profile, played it all of five hours.

Torchlight 2 is an ARPG built by the same guys who built the original Diablo 2, and maybe the original Diablo though I don't want to get quoted on that one. Diablo 2 sets the standard for ARPGs; there is no better game, to this day, in the category assuming you can handle the dated but thankfully sprite graphics. Early 3D graphics would have made the game agony to look at. I've played a fair bit of older games recently, and Diablo 2 is one of those truly classic games that somehow manages to "get it". It's possibly a product of its times - D2 came out before many of the razzle dazzle elements of the computer gaming had really come to the forefront.

Shootember: Fall of Cuberbots

I don't usually like to play sequels shortly after finishing a previous chapter in a series. It towards doing two main things: Graphics are always better, gameplay is always worse. Gameplay might not actually truly be worse, but it feels worse as you struggle to nail down changes in motion and control scheme.

just walk right into the gun

First impressions out of the gate: The game is definitely prettier, in fact, it might be one of the best looking games I've ever seen. WFC was attractive and polished, but Fall of Cyberton is actually legitimately gorgeous even beyond the environments which were already stellar. Gameplay is a bit weaker, but even more varied. I feel like it has encroached a bit too close to 'modern shooter' for my tastes, although it still doesn't have a full cover button scuttling walls "thing" that I've seen in some other games. Compared to the first it feels a bit sluggish and transforming comes off as slower. There's less a feeling of agility in much of the game.

literal of tower of power

The game's plot picks up what I imagine is some additional amount of time after the first one, though it's hard to pin down how much. As far as I can tell they have stopped talking about DARK ENERGON which is a massive, unreal huge improvement. I have no idea who settled on that plot device for the first game but I hope he sobered up and is living a healthy life now. It's hard to think he was in a good place when he imagined up that particular macguffin. There are more characters and more variety in enemies, though enemies still suffer from difficulty in being differentiated at a glance. It's a bit saddening since this is an issue in just about all FPSes, but in this game you can design totally different bodies for them! This is jarring when you run into "name" characters, who all look extremely different from the mainstay buffoons. Except the Combaticon fivesome, who look quite similar to the primary decepticon models. I found that interesting to see in action, as though the art team changed gears near the end of develop to put them into the game using other models as the basis. They look great, so it's not a complaint, but it's odd how Megatron or Starscream look so different from all of their soldiers.

haven't seen any others of those, huh

The plot remains, on the most part, pretty weak. Most characters and most dialogue is good; Megatron remains an awful eyesore with horrible dialogue and just ridiculous nonsense spewing from his mouth at all times. It's very strange how in the moment the game feels good, but you stop to consider what is going on and it is just silly. I have no idea what Megatron's overarching goal was supposed to be, other than just being angry about ... Something? I don't want to sperg out about the plot, but even more than the first game it really feels like Megatron just yells reality into warping itself to his desires. Stuff around him just doesn't make sense.

While character driven dialogue - the exchange between guys, the plans, the cut scenes and various speeches - are all really good, one thing that really stood out about the game is the very weird taunts the enemy units I think are directing at you. It's very strange because the audio direction is set up in such a way that I wasn't sure for most of the game who they were at all talking to. Were they talking to each other? The wall? It wasn't really clear.

Transitions through chapters and the general pacing of the game is much better than the first one, with lots of variety in those chapters as well. Transforming is unfortunately somewhat marginalized here, with enemies basically never transforming in a meaningful way and much of the vehicle stuff basically forced into the moment. When you do need to transform though, the vehicle sections are much better. The game is surprisingly when you consider just how poorly most vehicle sections are in most games. I mean the tank part of Crysis was so terrible - out of nowhere - that I actually cheated past it. I guess that's more of a FPS thing, maybe, thinking back on the vehicle sections in Just Cause 2 which were good. My favorite vehicle stuff involved the mid-game helicopter level with Vortex, who felt like you were rewarded for using each of his weapons and both of his forms. Also watching the thruster animation as the helicopter started jetting around never ceased to amuse.

The game is especially interesting for its capacity to actually continually improve over the course of the chapters, as many action games tend to get worse after blowing the opening set pieces. I wasn't at all impressed with the Metroplex stuff, but the middle levels are just a rush of really interesting set pieces as characters react to the climax of Metroplex's ascension and defense of Iacon. Then the plot falls back away as it attempts to slide back to the starting, as the entire game is a flashback. It kinda sticks gears with Megatorn returning to give boring speeches about how he's so angry about something. Given his giant phallic gun and his transformation into a huge dong, maybe it's pent up ... robo ... Something? Still, the levels continually improve other than his first couple scenes, which sucked. The last level reaches a fever pitch that actually got pretty exciting. As climaxes go, other game companies could learn from their lessons here - It briefly uses many of the assets introduced in the game

In the final conclusion I think the game is, in many ways, a slightly worse game and definitely a worse shooter than the first one. Many of the elements, especially the lack of transforming enemies and somewhat reduced variety of basic encounters, really takes away from the pound the ground combat the first game excelled at. On the other hand, the graphics engine has been pushed so far its glorious to just watch in motion, and the various chapters all have a ton of variety. This is a game where you spend some time as a hover jeep, a helicopter, a phallic tank, an eight foot tall titan, an angry brain addled robot who transforms into a dinosaur and even fits in a sweet little stealth action level. That's a ton of variety and presented in such a way where you legitimately wish the game was just longer! The ending alone has four completely different styles of play, with a gladiatorial battle, a dave and goliath fight and so on.

gimme five

That's pretty swell and I give them high praises for putting out so an interesting set of experiences. I wish I was better at multiplayer, but I'm so atrocious I'm not even going to bother. I'm a terrible shot, sigh. And yet I still quite enjoy shooters, and odd paradox.

Shootember: War for Cuber DARK ENERGON

no timer on nonsteam games

I avoided this game for a long time because I'm a Transformers "fan" of varying amounts on any given day and I assumed it was a boilerplate shooter that other Transformers fans were telling me was amazing because having Soundwave talk with a little synth action is enough to make their pants thunder as bits within break the sound barrier. I'm not kidding, it really doesn't take much to get them popping their cogs.

oh fuck it was dead space all along

So I finally fired it up and I was actually pretty floored with it. The thing that struck and strikes very quickly is how beautifully detailed the environments are, and not just the skyboxes!. The character models and animations are really slick too, with the whole Transforming element a joy to watch, but the levels are just lavished with detail. This is pretty weird, see, since shooters have a bad habit of being a bunch of boxes with other boxes in a skybox. War for Cybertron I was almost certain would be the boxiest robot box in the history of crates but somehow it isn't. It isn't better looking than Crysis 2 but it is really lovingly crafted.

The game is ostensibly a shooter but at times I'm not entirely certain it truly wants to be that. Characters can transform into a variety of vehicles, so there's drivingish bits and flyingesque bits that feel sort of like the shooter parts are still clinging pretty hard. There's also some jumping puzzles and some vague other sort of puzzles. It feels like they took a couple game ideas then hosed them down with shooter elements before dropping them into the prettiest damn boxes.

If that sounds sort of negative, maybe it is, but the game is a pretty decent shooter in terms of just gunning down dudes. Has a real blood pumping bam bam feel to it that puts a grin on your face. The other elements keep the action broken up, which I like, and some of the vehicles are nice to drive. I do find some of the jumping puzzles with their instant death time to reload dorkiness a bit annoying, but the game's check point system is better than some - not flawless, but fine. Also the game is not afraid to throw huge boss fights at you, or tease you with massive destruction being thrown around. Admittedly, if you're one like me who played too many mmorpgs and is long since sick of staged fights, you may find a little nausea in this game.

I really dig the animations on the characters themselves - It sinks in more and more as you play different bots that they all have beautifully detailed idle cycle, transformations, so forth. Although if looked at too long it becomes evident they are blocks that don't really "work" in terms of having joints or functional range of motion, they are still a delight to watch in action. They also sound really good on the most part - I find Cullen's Optimus a little out of place sometimes, but worse voice actors producing better lines feels about the same. Megatron's voice actor is not quite what I'd hope for, he's more of a Turmoil sounding character, which is a reference no one will ever get.

of course it rains in prison

Megatron's character and the overarching plot of the game beyond individual scenes of robotic mayhem, which the game does extremely well and with impressive grasp of scale, is pretty much repulsively awful. Megatron has no real character, he is as one dimensional as they come and his plot device which he screams repeatedly is unexplained goofy nonsense. I don't know if I want to say Dark Energon is children's cartoon level, since honestly it basically get hamfisted into everything and feels like something even little kids would start rolling their eyes at. It does everything! It defeats bosses for you, empowers his armies, is part of bombs and opens doors. You know you're really reaching with your plot device when in addition to everything else it is a skeleton key.

The story is on the most part simply awful. The characters are good, the dialogue is good, but the person who wrote the story should simply feel bad about what he's doing with his life. I mean really, really should think about how he's writing at a grade school level. When almost all of your plot centers on a blow by blow level on "plot device!" you're doing something wrong. It's honestly worse than watching an 80s cartoon. It's sort of a pity watching good voice actors perform good dialogue that, when you stop and parse, is absolutely dreadful in scope. Also the story does little to articulate why anyone is fighting this war at all. They hate each other and ... And yeah, that's all of it.

And don't give me the "There's a story???" tripe. If you don't want to pay attention to a story, that's totally fine. But you could have taken the same scenes with much the same dialogue and laid out something at least run of the mill instead of outright insulting.

Other things that aren't fun, and never were fun, and never will be fun. Waiting during a fight for some "instant death" attack to finish. The game gets worse and worse in this regard, with some of the last few battles having extremely long sessions of "drive around waiting for missile barrage to finish". This is MMORPG level design and it's beyond irritating to see it migrate into other games. I get that you want to make people dodge or avoid attacks, that's fine, but making me drive from something I can not see for more than even two seconds is boring and hovers right above being a chore. Past that and you're into tedious monotony.

really

It's not binary, of course, but a spectrum of tense moments that rapidly dissolve away. Tension turns into stress, and stress is the biggest enemy of fun. I think people have a ton of difficulty discerning or articulating the difference, which can make game design slippery. You desperately seek tension, but you utterly do not want stress. Worse, while I really like the NPCs that make up your squad, the fact you can run into them while you're trying to avoid something is atrocious.

Still - regardless of the bad story and a couple snafus in fight design - the game overall is a polished, surprisingly deep shooter with a great variety of play. As I said the game feels less like a shooter, more like a shooter operating through multiple minigames. Transforming can be pretty tertiary, or really important, depending on what stage of the game you're in. Also the game is surprising in terms of environmental variety; Cybertron really does feel like a "different world" and not just a metal Earth.

Shootember: Let's be negativestein

I can't take screenshots of Wolfenstein for reasons I am uncertain of. It does not allow steam overlay because bananas, and capture attempts do not seem to work. How nice! It's not really the best looking FPS. This is going to be pretty dry without pictures, ugh.

Old school space masters

why do you show me a broodhome when you won't let me

I can't do a counter since the Ur-Quan Masters isn't exactly a steam game. Provided free, the UQM is a port of a thing of a something, of Star Control 2. I am old enough to have played the Sega Genesis ports of Star Flight (done by EA) and Star Control (done by Accolade) which gives me a pretty decent historical grounding in this game. I'd read about SC2 as a teen and always felt a bit sour I couldn't - or hadn't, really - get a copy of it. It sounded great.

The game is regarded as a classic and it's hard not to see why, assuming you can see past the dated graphics and woefully dated gameplay. To get all the positive out of the way so I can get my complain on, for a classic game - fuck, for a game AT ALL - the voice acting and story telling is excellent. I love just listening to people talk, and the stories they tell are richly varied, if 80s as fuck. The combat is based around simplified physics of inertia and acceleration, but this gives flying the ships a real learning curve. It feels rewarding, though the AI is a tragedy. The music is wonderful and the world is vast, if a little hollow.

So it's good, and I like it, on the most part. But let's complain, because man is this game easy to complain about. If you are a huge fan of this game, don't read on, because while I "liked" Star Control 2, I think it's largely a majorly overrated turd of a game (though I admit, this could mostly be down to issues with the port)

Rochard is a great crate shooter

There is an inevitable weird moment that comes up in gaming where you look dead ahead at the screen and just wonder. Games are constructs, stories if you want to be poetic, in which a bunch of dudes got together to assemble a narrative for you to push your way through. In most games, which are inevitably flawed, there's a moment where shit is just retarded. You question why, you wonder what the point is, your brain tries to figure how they came up with the idea to do this at all.

This moment comes up a bunch in Rochard. One might even say about half the game.

At it's core Rochard was sort of sold to me as a puzzle game with some shootie elements. It's a side scroller, with a vast array of tools slowly added to the game which on the most part base themselves around the usage of a gravity tool; either in lifting things with your "G-Lifter" or in lowering gravity which you can control.

Those elements are awesome. Hitting enemies - and there are enemies galore - in the face with crates actually never gets old. Hitting enemies in the fact with a crate which knocks them off a ledge then their corpse sails into another enemy killing them as well is pretty much a windmill slam of awesome. In fact, in an ironic twist given how much I hated the fucking "crate" in Dead Space, the crates are the best part of this game. I fucking love crates in Rochard. Just rename it CRATEZ. All the little puzzle quirks in Rochard are nice, the fuse system, recoil jumps, all the weird force fields - the game has tons of ideas for how to make crates fun.

Then again if you could pick up the crate in Dead Space and splatter zombies with it, the game would be actually twice as good as it was. I guess that would ruin the nonexistent atmosphere of the end of the game though!

Going back to the problems with Rochard - Well ok, I mean, at a basic level the game is an indie title with somewhat lacking voice acting outside of the main character, the controls are a little loose and the graphics may or may not appeal to you. I really like the art style, as it is clean and simple, with pretty solid conveyance of different elements at a glance. I think on an aesthetic level its objectively good, but subjective tastes may vary as they tend to. The plot is hokey and probably a little unnecessary given the overall context of the game but that's not something I like to get stuck on.

But the big issue is the game at times seems to really not want to be a puzzle game, and instead be a contra esque side scrolling shooter. With tubby, slow moving, goofball protagonist. I'm not entirely sure - hence the sense of wonderment - what they were thinking. Is it really hard to come up with fun physics puzzles when you have that many possible options? Almost all the puzzle bits are fun, and much of the game feels like it should just be puzzles as the hero sneaks his way through the underbelly of various facilities.

I know this might sound a little weird but I feel like the puzzle of "how do I get out of this room?" should have made more of an appearance. It's realistic that a tubby miner trying to sneak his way through an asteroid and the later levels would run into this problem, as opposed to armed guards finding their way into and throughout the duct work. What are they doing there? The game suffers tremendously from having an incredibly interesting set of, while not necessarily "unique" puzzling elements, at least cheerfully presented ones that it largely seems to have no interest in using. Instead it constantly throws a pair of puzzles at you I have little enjoyment of: How Do I Shoot These Guys With This Terrible Aiming System and Some Shit With Lasers

The Laser puzzles are obnoxious and artificially lengthen the game by lasering you to death repeatedly. Which then triggers a relatively slow reload (seriously, this game loads slower than dead space) and you repeat the puzzle. This isn't good game design by any stretch of the imagination, given I don't think that silly cute puzzles involving gravity and crates are all that hard to put in the game instead. I sort of gave them a pass in the early game, where it made sense for there to be lasers and other hazards - You're on a mining platform, in deep space, on an asteroid. Of course there's going to be demolition equipment! But in the later game, you're not on a mining platform, so why the fuck are there lasers. Lasers, I might add, which kill the enemies. So they're not exactly a 'security system' are they?

The enemies though are the real stinker of the game and perhaps speak extremely poorly of the game's development team. While I'm loathe to call someone else's hard work poor when I'm writing poorly crafted sentences on a blog, I'm at a loss to explain why the enemies are even in the game in such numbers to begin with, especially in light of their inept coding.

Enemy AI is a delicate balance: An AI that is "too good" frustrates players. An AI that is utterly incapable and toothless is also irritating, as it is more or less a waste of time. The Enemies in Rochard are both. They are perfect, crack shots, nailing a moving target behind cover with near perfect accuracy. If they can hit you, they will. In fact, once activated, enemies will fire on you from off screen, plastering you over and over as you flee to break line of sight. Cover has little impact on their ability to kill you, as their shots are completely steady and relentless.

But enemies are also rubbish, easily tricked and exceedingly dopey. The only reason they're a threat at all is simply a matter of their accuracy being perfect, while your ability to hit a moving target can be less than perfect. You are then thrust into battling them in mostly linear hallways, where they fire on you from a screen over. With little recourse, you often simply end up gunned down.

It's baffling. Not only are they entirely needless within the relative framework of what makes the game good, you are even denied the means by which to deal with them in a fun way. Dropping crates on enemies or smacking them with exploding turret debris is "fun". Shooting the enemies is irritating - the aiming system is clumsy, possibly as a mix of both needs the game puts on it. The puzzle elements, I think, suffer for this as well. The game is thankfully less than excited to give you stacking puzzles, since stacking crates is actually pretty tedious.

I think at it's core Rochard was a really great game, but then needed to be lengthened out and they settled on something a little less than optimal. The puzzles, though usually simple, have this earnest hands on feeling that makes them surprisingly satisfying. Had the game been 75% puzzles, 25% run and gun instead of 50:50 I think I'd be giving it high praise. As is, it's about half a great game, half an exercise in mediocrity and I'm not at all certain why.

Worth getting if you can put up with there being less puzzle in your puzzle game, not so much if you get to the first run and gun section and slam the keyboard down in rage.

As an aside and sort of a foot note - I could do without the odd racism mixed with the extremely strange selection of accents on the sky police.

In space, ships are made of grey with splashes of Red

The first thing that stood out about this game, especially after playing Mass Effect 2, is how wonderfully quick the saving and loading is. Seriously! I was like wow, it saved that fast? Loads up that quick? It's delightful. The weird thing, I mean, is that this actually seems really important to a horror game. If the game had long loading screens you'd end up like ME2, where I often accidentally misclicked after tabbing back into the game.

The second thing is holy cow is that ever a ton of blood. I mean there is blood everywhere, on everything. There's more blood than there is much of anything else. It starts to completely lose impact, as blood doesn't really indicate violence coming to you. It just looks like you're actually on some deep space raspberry jam factory ship.

The blood and its over-abundance sort of defines the main thematic thrust of the game. It is horror executed through absolutes. It's not violent, it's ultra violent. There is little in the way of pacing, little in the way of slow build up in encounters. Shit goes bad quickly and then it just blasts it in your face. The game is a fire hose of gore, violence and blood to the point it's a weird mix of comical and gross, but not really horror.

What confused me at first is the fact the game does in fact understood horror. There are bits where it is decidedly creepy and atmospheric, with some really nice attention to detail. Little tricks of the lighting and odd well placed sounds that tickle you just the right way. Then some corpse smashes its skull against a pipe and all atmosphere is instantly lost. I think the end conclusion is they simply firehosed the game with absolutely everything: ultra violence, atmosphere, weird sci-fi ideas, blood, gore and every spooky anything they'd ever seen.

I've heard of the great outdoors but this is

The sci-fi elements are surprisingly a step above my expectations. I'm not necessarily saying that the game spews chemistry and physics at you, but sci-fi concepts like cloning labs, zero gravity and air production at least show an interest in outlandish concepts. It does, on some level, feel like some fifty year old crappy spaceship would perhaps feel. Or at least feels like someone sat down and thought about the possibilities - There is a serious attempt at world building. The storyline angle world building is mediocre, but the ship itself is truly awesome.

So then we move onto the "game" in and of itself. Gameplay is pretty simple stuff: You're an engineer, you shoot the monsters du jour with various weapons that actually feel like less than military hardware. Gunplay is pretty accurate and monsters feel tense without being overwhelming. The game is generally pretty fair about combat in a way I like - I find myself looking around and wondering where the freshly arrived enemies are, but usually they don't go for me before I get a chance to find them. It seems weird to complain about this, but going into a "horror game" you expect a ton of cheap ass bullshit. The game is mostly well paced and fair in that regard, at least on normal. I did say mostly - There's some crap, especially in zero gravity environments, but also awkward 'lockdown' scenes where you're jammed into a closet.

Enemies remain scary, even though they're not much of a threat in the true sense of the word. They're at least dangerous enough that you pay attention to them, though scary in this context may not be quite the correct word. Combat is surprisingly interactive, as you need to aim to remove limbs, not just body and head shots. You don't just find the target and hold down fire, but quickly move to tear it to pieces.

Puzzles, unfortunately, vary between interesting and totally boring. One of the issues I have with the game is that save points, as a rule, should always come before and after puzzles that take a couple minutes to solve. I mean literally the save point should be right there. It's all well and good to have checkpointesque system, and I can live with that, but several of the larger puzzles have combat in and around them. That's irritating. More frustrating is the fact that the game basically loses its stride in regards to puzzles, eventually just using them to burn time. The crate shit at the end is beyond obnoxious. I honestly don't understand the purpose of boring me to death (ha) with moving boxes around or fetch quests.

The storyline is ... I don't know. I started to pick up that there were going to be derpier elements as I went. The game didn't go outright berserk with them, rather it keeps much of it pretty low key, but there's some definite macguffin action to try to tie things together.  There's an especially odd moment where one of the cast just ... Screws you over. For reasons I'm largely not altogether too sure, other than the needs of the narrative, really work. The macguffin itself is at least given a sense of, if not personality, then at least a certain feeling of inevitability that governs its "actions" in the game. The subtle difference between a plot object that people just do things crazy like around, and a plot object that drives people crazy to do things around for it, is enough that the story never really catches itself too harshly.

There's a couple other elements that felt bent in to feed the needs of the narrative. I've mentioned the game just has too much blood, but it also has too many corpses. Now this may sound odd, but the game implies that the necromorphs are made from the dead, very actively at that. And yet there's just random bodies and bits all over, just to add to the gore factor. Thing is, those bodies should just be necromorphs, not gorish decorations. Also you're generally supposed to smash bodies, which is just more hassle and chore added in. There's also way too many of the "baby" necromorphs - which do actually have an explanation in game for existance, but they make up like half the necromorph population in game.

This wouldn't bother me if they weren't more or less a chore to deal with.

The other thing that becomes such a chore is the audio. Now, I understand the idea that you want spooky sounds in a horror game, but Dead Space's audio direction is just goofy nonsense. About halfway through the game, I just muted it. That's really bad. The big problem here is that yes, a horror game should have spooky and tense sounds, but after a while you just get sick of all the goofy noises the game constantly makes. It's just constant grinding, irritating slop bucket noises, off key chanting and Isaac panting just to fill dead air. It's entirely fine for a horror game to ease up and just have normal sounds for a while, you know?

there's a hole in your plan

So in summary: A largely good and interesting game, bogged down by overwhelming audio direction, puzzles that slip into terrible and way too much pointless gore. The boss fights especially where mostly neat, though the end of the game (past about chapter 9) just turned into a monstrous chore. I get that you need a macguffin to justify all this gore, but seriously, I shouldn't spend multiple hours of my life pushing the fucking thing around. If I were to assess the game by its ending, I would actually call it "terrible" but that's probably a little unfair.

Though seriously, pushing a crate around? Like, seriously? What the fuck is wrong with a development team that honestly thinks a human being wants to spend more than an hour of their life pushing around a box, clearing the way for a box, pushing the box some more, so on?

The last boss, though, was pretty good. Neat and epic. Ended the game on a far better note than I was expecting. The boss fights really were, on the most part, the stand out elements of the game.

Fatalism of the Orcs

I largely don't review games I consider good until I have completed them. I think Orcs Must Die is good, but I also don't think it's worth finishing. That's an odd paradox.

OMD is probably my favorite of the hybrid shooter/tower defense games to come out in 2011. Dungeon Defenders is considerably better looking in some ways (admittedly, the art style is worse, but that's an aesthetic choice) but the game is so damn boring and grindy, with this weird slippery feel to the game world. Sanctum is just worse in every respect other than having multiplayer - it's weird looking, aim intensive and lacks a satisfying feeling that conveys the effectiveness of your toys. OMD's shooting is less aim intensive more action than Sanctum and its traps feel far more satisfying.

It may seem a little weird to comment that a shooting / tower defensive hybrid is too aim intensive, but that's just the thing: You're not playing just a shooter. Having to line up perfect, weak point shots in Sanctum is the wrong type of gameplay, as you want to be observing the performance of your maze and your towers, not just shooting things. The end result if Sanctum is a bad shooter and a bad tower defense game, while OMD is a sloppy but satisfying shooter and a good tower defense game.

In fact, the core gameplay is almost spot on in every regard, except for two main problems.

The biggest, hugest problem with the game is it simply lacks the deeper polish that makes most tower defense games enjoyable in the long term. Each level represents a logical problem that needs to be deconstructed to effectively defeat, with multiple solutions based on the myriad of combinations. OMD really suffers in this regard. It has no ability to save your progress on any level, which chokes replay value.

I don't necessarily mean I want a rewind key. The game lacks the ability to save any concept of trap positioning, or let alone which traps you selected. You need to reselect your entire menu of traps each and every single time you restart a map. Accidents happen, mistakes are made, and the game punishes you severely for it. Even more ridiculous is how many things can't be reset once you've begun. Selection of the bonus powers talent tree can not be reset from within a map, you have to restart the entire level, repeating the entire stupid process. Again, and again, and again.

The menus and powers involved are mostly solid though. The menus are a delight to go through, with lots of personality and it is pretty quick. It's pretty evident that the developers completed this process over and over again, but it becomes a serious question of how they didn't fucking notice how unbelievably irritating not being able to save load outs is. It's baffling. In games where the load out screen is shitty (like, say, Mass Effect) you would actually just stop playing if they tried to make you build a new load out every single battle.

Traps, as an extension of this, are really satisfying. Unlike most tower defense games, OMD has few abilities you won't enjoy deploying. Picking traps is actually somewhat difficult simply based on how they're all good, all fun and all interesting. The game is a huge success on that angle, as opposed to like Sanctum where they're blocks I barely even notice doing anything. The various combat abilities are all delightful as well; Orcs are hurled, blasted, exploded, frozen and burnt in ways that while violent, are cheerful enough it doesn't feel especially grimdark. The game is colorful and gibtastic, with a delightfully nonchalant style to the whole matter.

However, getting back to the core problems, the game suffers from some seriously awful level design. The levels are weird, nonsensical constructs that have really nothing to do with being anything outside weird lines. Because of this, you really wonder why they bothered to make it an indoor castle thing and not something more of a say, fantasy reality.

But the real problem is that the levels work against the game's gameplay. While running multiple paths and different enemies types allows for a deepening game plan, after a while the game just start vomiting nonsense at you with multiple doors, confusing maps and overall irritation that gets away from the gibbing. Instead of spending my time enjoying the showers of gore, I'm instead running around, quickly putting up traps without planning and restarting maps because there is no manner of predicting where traps should go.

Trial and error gameplay is fine - In fact, you could argue Defense Grid the "Best" TD game has tons of it - but not when you're forced to spend minutes rebuild your interface and traps every single time you want to reconsider your plan. There's so little information presented, as well, that you are forced to trial and error through it. Couple the two together and while it's fun to limp over the finish line the first time you finish a level, several of the later levels just become too chorelike to bother replaying.

The worst part of this is the game always feel like it ends right after you've "solved" the puzzle. There is no satisfying part where the game slams you with massive enemy waves that your carefully assembled defenses pick apart - Instead, once you've crossed the basic "finish line" you're done. Maybe it's different on the highest difficulty, but I haven't read that and I'm not going to drag myself through the off last level just to discover the higher difficulty is even less enjoyable.

Like I said, this one of the few games I've really liked but have also found too much of a chore to finish. It's an odd contradiction to express but one that seems simple once you've played it. The gameplay is good. The game, on the other hand, has glaring holes in it that make it harder to recommend.

I'm gonna hold off on picking up the sequel til it's on sale, or til someone confirms me that the game's weird holes have been patched up.

Massively effective DLC system

Time is kinda off since I idled often

I don't have much of a thing for sequels. Sure, almost all my favorite books are presented with sequels galore, but books don't really bother with re-creating the entire framing from the ground up. Video game sequels pretty rarely are truly sequels in the film and book sense, often with huge changes to the game experience.

And holy poop does this game change the feel of the first game.

Insert ape based caption here

First things first, the game presents itself in this weird set up as though the antagonists of the second game are in some manner discrete from the first game. This is - no more no less - about as successful a plot element as butter is at successfully battling your frying pan set to max. You see through it instantly and it leaves little spots on the narrative you'd really they rather didn't bother with. But the game constantly talks about this other race as though they're somehow separate from the original game's antagonistic structure. It's really awful and it creates this weird feeling that you're facing an enemy that isn't so much a complex machine empire, but rather a bunch of mental patients who have difficulty deciding which spoon to jam into humanity's collective eyeball. I didn't really like this, and there's this weird subplot where the enemy "General" says your name all the time.

I have no idea why. Maybe I missed it.

Second, the combat system is squarely worse. It took me less time to adapt to it than the first game, since I've played more console babby cover system games since then. That being said, combat is just ... Bad. At the end of the first game I felt confident in what I was doing and had grown accustomed to the heat system. In this game I spammed one ability (Shockwave) while shooting people with which ever random gun I decided I felt like firing. I understand and actually appreciate the desire to make the game more of a shooter, but I think arguing the game is worse because it's more of a shooter is disingenuous.

Mass Effect 2 isn't worse because it's more "shooter". It's worse because it's a bad shooter AND a bad roleplaying game that traded out elements you'd actually see in a good shooter. If I open the gun pane or whatever you want to call it in Crysis 2, it tells me which guns are better. Alpha Protocol had a whole over complex window, and that's probably too far, but giving shooter fans numbers to work with isn't against the genre.  The other shooting elements are slapdash, guns have no feel, enemies appear from weird angles and I never get that satisfying feel when I shoot someone.

I mean at its simplest, ME2 really suffers because I'm shooting people with no solid explanation of which gun is good against what and no solid feeling when bullets hit people.

I can forgive the weaknesses in the plot (the middle chapter always gets the stick) and I can forgive the shooting, since it's really no worse than any RPG combat from my childhood. Yeah FF7's combat system was so deep bro! Herp derp. I can forgive them if the characters are good. And on the most part, they are.

My favorite new character: Miranda. I liked her serious attitude, and her voice actor was good. The last character added to the party was also awesome, but ends up joining the team a little too late to enjoy.  My least favorite character: Miranda's ass. Look, I know games need to be sexually charged because ... Uh, something about how dudes need tits on screen if there isn't violence or something but seriously, her ass is more of a character than half the cast. I mean it has more shading going on than her face and half of the time she's talking the ass puts in an appearance. The weird thing I actually feel considerably more annoyed with this than the blatant "I fuck chicks" in the Witcher. Like sure, you have sex with way more women in the Witcher, but that's mostly over and done with pretty quickly. It's an element of the game you can entirely avoid and has no real impact on the game, beyond making me laugh really hard a couple times. It's just so tongue in cheek I could't take it seriously. Miranda's ass (and the super awkward romance stuff with Tali) come up repeatedly, each time making me shudder a little. That screen shot above? That's from a loyalty mission you need to do in order to unlock Miranda's last power. It could be argue the game mechanically encourages it, and then literally shoves her ass in your face. The Witcher is silly, but this is actually outright creepy.

Just murdered a dude in cold blood. Now, some ass.

I actually botched the romance angles in the game due to misclicking an option in a dialogue tree. Given how creepy the first game's romance scene was, I'm not exactly torn up about missing it. The best thing is I didn't even realize it was relevant. Oddly enough, I eventually fixed the misclick but I guess I broke it or something.

The rest of the cast mostly returns from the first game, minus the Racist Who Dies. Most of them don't join the team, which is fine. They still resolve plot threads from them, which I liked. You also get this awesome Salarian scientist who does good work and kills people. It's hard not to gush about the quality of his voice acting and character. I change my opinion, he's my favorite. He sings!

So the game sells it based on actually getting to know the various characters and acting on their plots. It even has a bit where Seth Green the ship's pilot as played by Seth Green gets to hobble around, crack some jokes and watch other people get brutally murdered. I don't like Seth Green, but I like him here. I can't explain that.

In summary, the game has a sweet singing salarian scientist, steve blum doing an impression of wrex from the first game, worse combat, a weaker plot and largely deeper characterization. It's also a better looking game with lots of pretty vistas and less barren rocks. The game also drops the vehicle sections, which were bad, then re-adds them in DLC. I'm still a little bit blown away by this one: The main complaint about the first game's vehicle stuff is it was boring and you feel like you were driving a shopping cart. In this game, you drive a shopping hovercart and there's jumping puzzles. That's incredible. The gap between the developer who came up with that and reality itself must be tremendous. Seriously: There are jumping puzzles.

I think I enjoyed ME2 more than enough to recommend it, though like most roleplaying games, I have largely no intent to play it again. I archived my saved game and I'll stash it away with the intent to play ME3 after getting a rest from terrible roleplaying shooter hybrid things.

Adventures of the Worst Spy Ever

I'm not great at stealth. It's not fundamentally in my nature; I understand the concept, but damn am I ever impatient and bad at it. I mean, make it simple and linear, I'll probably get it. Make it sort of dicey or weirdly floppy and my true secret agent persona comes through: Set everyone on fire and go totes ma goats with an assault rifle blazing. No man is an island, and no one misses a volcano, but no one gets out alive either.

A literal master of stealth

So anyway Alpha Protocol is some game that did lukewarm in reviews and is actually well loved on SA, which isn't really much of a thing since people on SA tend to group think a little. But then so do reviewers, so I guess that's fair?

The game is really generous with being an espionage game, since like I said I'm actually the worst spy ever conceptually seen in a video game. And I mean literally seen, assuming your eyes have not already melted. In spite of being about spying and sneaking, the game fully supported my class choice of COMMANDO and didn't seem too upset with me for killing piles of dudes. So many dudes. This is nice.

Combat, which is often complained about in the game, seemed pretty reasonable on the most part. The actual gunplay and cover system seemed mostly fine, and close combat is satisfying to look at albeit extremely simple. The problem, and of course some of the complaining has a foundation, lies in the transitions. There's a couple examples, but all of them do have to do with that. The first one is that while melee is good and ranged combat is fine, sometimes you can knock enemies out of melee and then you sort of flail for a bit. It's very strange. Bosses, as well, transition between phases of combat which the game does terribly. The one boss goes immune to damage while you're punching him which just feels really weird.

The stealth dome: for stealthing

The cover system, man. I mean really, I've yet to see a game where the cover system even approaches functionality. Other than Doom, where the cover system was an accident. A basis of all good gaming is a smooth and reliable set of reactions to input - Known as control. The cover system felt out of control, sloppy and on the most part pretty disinterested in me. Thankfully I just shot everyone, they were dead and my bullets were my cover.

The story in Alpha Protocol is pretty simple - A military contractor does bad stuff, black operations, do stuff maybe don't do stuff and there you go. What is interesting about AP is I don't think it's possible or at the very least easy to examine most of the story on a playthrough. This is unique and pretty impressive. This element, and how the various factions interact, play out and so on, offers both replayability and a different story for each person based on their choices. I'm not entirely certain how perfect the various elements in fact are, since I'm only going to go through it once, but I managed to miss entire boss fights, get most of the cast killed by accident and not learn half the players actual identities. If I didn't have a giant pile of back logs, I'd probably go through the game again with a different play style but I have this huge backlog.

What did really suck about this is after a while the game starts framing acts with a conversation with one of the antagonists, presenting the game sort of as flashbacks. I didn't really enjoy this over much, since it kinda spoiled plot points, but it was constructed in a unique way each time that show off how the game interacts with your own narrative.

The characters, though, are the real boon of the game. And bones. Literally.

He told me to put the Bees to someone. The Beeeees.

The cast is, as one can imagine in a very grey morality spy game, a mixed bag of enjoyable personalities. I found interacting with them to be the real delight of the game, some of them because like the crazy guy in Taipei because they're funny and some of them because the dialogue system is enjoyable to work through. You can influence what you guys says, but only up to a point. Also, different attitudes work with different people well, which creates a sense that the characters are actually characters and not talking boxes that poop out replies. It gives conversations a legitimate sense of being a conversation and develops them into people you like, or hate.

Probably the worst part of the game, though, is blatantly obvious forced decisions. The game puts a number of "no win" choices in front of you. The issue here is that, they're not subtle, they're played to the trope which is ... Rather dull. It's the weakest part of the story, but the story is not necessarily very strong. It's the well written and well voiced characters that are. So I can deal with that.

All in all, it had its flaws and I understand where the bad reviews start - the various "skill" minigames could use some serious adjustment in terms of Not Being a Chore - but the actual meat of the game is a strong evolution on the genre that I guess unfortunately didn't do so well. Pity.

Which is to say I am part of the Goonmind and yeah, recommend this game.

Torchlight 2 (Beta)

i like snow

Full disclosure: I did not and will not be buying D3, so I can't really compare the two games. I played a ton of D2X, but none of the first Torchlight. So for me this is a transition from D2X to TL2 Beta, with no ARPGs between or about.

I played the stress test beta for most of its duration. I played the first little bit on all of the classes, and played through most of it on the Embermage, as well as almost as much with a friend on the Outlander class. I think I got a pretty decent take on the game, though maybe not. The game is not promoting a closed unhackable multiplayer experience, so my intention is by no means to bother with the game multiplayerwise.

In simplest terms the game is Diablo 2 run through a Warcraft or maybe a Dota2 filter; it's hard to really describe the visual style outside of these terms. It is attractive and cartoony, with nice animations and good visual variety. It isn't really stunning by any means though, the game looks somewhere between big title and indie release. The spell effects are visually strong and the art carries nicely, but it isn't quite as top tier as some of the stuff I've played recently.

Outside of the visual style, it's Diablo 2. I mean it's faster paced, with more skill variety and better itemization, but it's Diablo 2 repackaged and refined. It moved quicker and in most fashions it is a smoother game, but it really does feel mostly like the same game. I'm not sure this upsets me - Most of Diablo 2's flaws were either in basic problems with the genre that have been ironed out since then, graphical weakness or just odd programming errors. They've fixed most of those and then brewed up some new ones.

On the plus side, inventory tetris is completely gone. The game actually gives you space for each "type" of thing, as well as space on your pet as well. Your pet can shapeshift, sell things for you and even purchase potions. I noticed the pet doesn't remember the shopping list if you close the window, which strikes me as odd. I feel like it would be better if you could tell the pet 'I wish to keep this many potions on me' and then it would buy potions to fill you up to them.

fucking pirates

I really like the pet thing too, it feels somewhere between hunter pet (from wow) and druid wolf minions in d2x. They're also thankfully relaxed about the pet dying, which is the worst part of any pet game. Sure it's a little silly that your pet can never die, but who cares? You can die and that's all that matters.

The game also has much nicer visual variety. I loved D2's willingness to go to different places and explore a world built up around the first game's lore, but the game was still a bit too tightly wound around the 'grey stone walls, everything covered in blood, demons made of hobos stitched together' sort of thing. TL2, at least from what the beta has shown, features lots of different locales and styles.

On the downside - And this might be the beta talking - the game does introduce new issues to the genre. The biggest one, and one that painfully departs from D2 (or at least, is worse than D2), is its flat out harder both to parse how much elemental damage you're taking, what kind of resistance you need and how much resistance you need. The resist system didn't make any sense to me at the time, it felt unresponsive. One of the worst moments came in the last dungeon in the beta: An enemy was nailing me to near death with "shadow" bolts. From off screen. How do I tell what element it is doing? The only way I could figure out was highlighting over its name bar. In D2, whatever hits you registers on your character with an elemental animation, but TL2 didn't seem to really bother. Even worse I just ... Have no idea if the enemy was just too powerful, my resists were too low or my gear not good enough.

A bad issue of this is the game does not allow map resets easily. In D2, if you fought too tough a boss, you'd just reset the map and start the area again. I'm not really sure why TL2 wouldn't allow you to do this - You can just go online and join another player's game, but it's an unnecessary step of hassle in a genre where the ability to just grind up more gear to fix your flaws is clearly part of the design. Sure, you can turn down the difficulty, but who wants to do that?

The other problem with this is, well, you clearly need a bunch of resistance from very early on in the game, at least on Veteran difficulty. Items are not easy to read, and it's hard to tell if items are at a higher item level (ie have a bigger pool of stats). I'm not saying items are tough to figure out, it's just they're sorted poorly and you have to struggle to add up which ones are relevant, and which aren't. The most irritating element are the enchants, which don't really list as being an enchant. Since you're supposed to be able to remove and add enchants, it's really difficult to tell what exactly IS the enchant. I don't much care for this, since it makes comparing items for upgrade harder or just outright impossible.

Overall, though, the game is a visually pleasing and streamlined modern version of D2, with many of the years old annoyances gone at last. Enemies arrive on the battlefield in a variety of ways too, with skeletons pulling themselves off swords they were impaled on, enemies bursting from huts or jumping down from fortress walls. It feels good and dynamic.

I didn't really feel the class balance was quite there, but the beta is supposed to go through a revision period when it comes to skills, so maybe they'll get that closer to "good" soon. I'm looking forward to buying retail, though I'm not sure if I'll pick it up when it releases or just get it a little cheaper at the winter sale. $15 (in a four pack) isn't too bad a deal, though. I mean it looks nice, it's polished, it's clean and it's fun. $15 for a good quality release is quite a deal, even if it's graphically a bit behind the curve, but who cares anyway.

I mean besides this will run fine on my notebook

Just enough causes to get behind

I'll admit it straight out – I've never played any open world game that falls into the “Like GTA” category. I've never really played, at least to any level of actually remembering playing it, GTA games or any of the games that are patterned to be 'like' GTA. “Open world gaming” is actually sort of new to me, other than like morrowind, which isn't new at all.

I picked up Just Cause 2 for at best something along the lines of 'a song'. I think it was on sale for 2.50, but maybe I paid five dollars for it. This is the line where Steam games just get really silly. I paid that much for the Witcher and I'm actually left with the feeling I should pay more for the next game to make up for it. I put off playing it for several months due to lacking an Xbox 360 controller. My teen years I played consoles and then in the next decade played computer games, so suffice to say I'm pretty solid on a keyboard. But years of writing has given my an appreciation for doing something different with my hands, especially if that difference is not developing carpal tunnel syndrome. Gripping a control pad gives you nice solid feel when it comes to platforming and driving, but shooting is another story.

The game has a learning curve and that curve is choppy. Some stuff is instantly obvious, like how bad I am at driving a car being mostly on my end. Some stuff is too hectic to pick up on – I recognize keys mostly based on their position against my hand, so the QTEs trouble me and I sometimes fuck them up. I'm also still not sure which buttons do what in a car, I think one hops out and another shoots or something something, parachute? Oh it's parachute. The weirdest thing is realizing the dodge button, which launches Rico into a roll, is paramount to utterly definitive. Dodging is more effective than basically everything else in the game. Hook shot onto a speeding car? Enemy bullets still home onto you. Hook shot onto a motorcycle and then take off at top speed? Again, dodge works better.

The game has, admittedly, little more than a fondness towards reality. It follows its own rules, and those rules are not sensible. Physics, especially, are just silly. Gatling gun fire launches enemy units into the air, and car crashes are incredible kinetic explosions that reliably launch everything not strapped down hurling through the air. While clownish, it adds a sort of 'action film' element to the game that I appreciate. The game has little interest in realism.

On the other hand, in terms of building a game world the developers wow me. While it's true the game looks basically like an island with some cities and stuff on it – It reminds me immensely of hawaii – The attention to detail is really rewarding. It's visually lush and makes me wonder how bad the developers of fantasy games must be. The game is pretty enough that sometimes you just skydive or drive around, casually sauntering to the next mission with an eye for the scenery. That hasn't happened to me in ages. Dues Ex: Human Revolution and Bulletstorm were better looking games, but lacked the critical drop in tension or raw splendor to really sink it in.

Missions, on the note, have reasonable variety that uses the game itself well. Missions essentially direct you to head somewhere and do something the engine could let you do otherwise, but with some structure to it that adds to the difficulty.

Difficulty is a big component of the stuff I find miserable about the game. Death is no more than an inconvenient occurrence, resulting in needing to taxi yourself back to whatever you might have been doing or back a checkpoint in a mission. The problem here is that since difficulty is “who cares” the game doesn't really seem to care if it throws up on you. The aiming AI, as I've said, is goofy. It's not generally a big deal, but the game is pretty absurd about simply respawning waves of enemies out of your line of sight, even in places where no one could be. Where it gets really annoying is rocket launchers which magically home in on you. Obviously the designers really didn't care, since a bullshit death means so little, but this complete lack of concern leads to some frustrating gameplay.

The correct escort quest: On a motorcycle

One of the other big ones is the whole upgrade system. Running around finding bits allows you to upgrade a narrow selection of vehicles to really no point (since they're never the ones you steal) while also allowing you to upgrade guns. My real issue with the gun upgrade system is weapons absolutely must be upgraded or combat is just irritating, which the game makes no real mention of. For some reason the developers never thought to put in auto switching, so you gleefully attempt to fire an empty gun at people. Suffice to say, unupgraded weapons run out of ammo at the drop of a hat. After upgrading weapons with the parts I'd scrambled together I'm pretty much forced to use those guns, since the other guns are still crap.

The last real irritation is the race system. Flying a plane is not enjoyable in the game, which is probably since flying planes is not exactly the world's easiest task. I tried doing the flying challenges and just found them frustrating, flight unfortunately does not truly convey a sense of speed. On the other hand the car/truck challenges feel fantastic, with many of them being clever or creative usage of the game world. The one where you just drive through a city and plow through civilians was a bit drab, but there's one where you zoom through a military base, and one that is plotted along the wrong lane of a highway. These are neat and exciting to fiddle with.

All in all I think this is definitely one of the more outright concerned with "fun" games I've played in a long time. It's certainly not flawless, but it's pretty and silly much of the time. Given I got it at such a low price, it's impossible to complain though.