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.

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.

Laser guided mutant ass simulator

Full disclosure: The last shooter I actually played through is Crysis 2, which I really like. In fact, pardoning my enjoyment of Doom I think Crysis is pretty much what I like in terms of single player shooting. I bought Hard Reset over the sale as well, but that game didn't seem as good so I went with Bulletstorm first. This, by the way, is how back logs grow into mighty forests of games.

Bulletstorm when compared to Crysis has a worse engine, shorter single player and a worse story. It's also got straight up worse gunplay, with a weird melee element that sort of trips you up when enemies magically get into melee and start pushing you around. I say magically because it's either an issue with how they spawn in or I'm not sure, but often I'd suddenly be getting kicked in the side by a mutant you'd think you'd notice running screaming at you.

That's pretty unfair though. Bulletstorm isn't necessarily an attempt at producing a serious shooter, rather a more slapstick goofy gunplay engine wrapped around a basic and simple story that works. You play a guy out for revenge on some jerk off, and you crash land a resort planet that didn't run its logistics so well and was overrun with mutants. It's heavily implied that the one faction of mutants you fight are the remaining tourists.

The game's resource system is uniquely structured around how you fuck enemies up. If you kill enemies with generic bulleting into the gut, you actually run out of ammo. On the other hand if you do fun trickshots, of which I think I explored maybe half the hundreds of them, you get bonus points. This helps encourage weapon variety, since different munitions have different costs and plus it's cool to laser guide an explosive sniper round into a mutant's ass, explode it and kill his friends for bonus points. They probably could have built more of the game around this as its fundamentally enjoyable and doesn't need a great deal of exposition to cover for.

The game's weapons are, however, woefully shitty and a major problem even on normal is that the guns basically don't feel like they do anything. I think I killed about 75% of all enemies with the sniper rifle, with some other limited amount going to the shotgun. The shotgun is terrible, with an effective range of about two feet and almost no damage dealing capacity. In this sense the "Trickshots" become something you absolutely have to do all the time, which takes the wind out of them. Half the time you're better of just booting enemies repeatedly into things, which seems a little ridiculous and gets tedious. There's also a sort of plasma leash weapon that you can pull enemies in and boot them out with, except it doesn't reliably work on half the enemies in the game so I just stopped bothering with it.

Enemy variety isn't great and enemy design isn't especially satisfying. There's a breed of Skull that can soak up regular gunfire without flinching, which is just moronic. I can't wrap my head around this design decision at all. I died to this several times simply because I can't tell them apart from the other enemies, or more likely because I was getting bored of spamming headshots off the sniper rifle. The bosses are, again, something you repeatedly shoot with the sniper rifle. If other weapons work well for them, I don't know, since you're only allowed 3 weapon slots and you need the sniper rifle to kill most everything and then something to switch to in melee when you get swarmed. Which is the shotgun, even though it sucks.

In normal games this isn't quite an issue, but in this you find yourself irritated without guns to do those jobs. You can boot enemies in melee, of course, but it isn't effective on multiple targets and is pretty wimpy unless you have something to kill them into.

On the plus side all the guns have an alternate fire mode that opens up some additional sweet options. The sniper rifle can switch to explosive rounds while the shot gun has some sort of powered up flame blast. Both of these options make them better at their existing jobs, though, so it's not really as exciting as it should be.

What does surprise me is just how good the 'vehicle sections' if you will, are. There's a couple arenas where the game switches it up a bit and I'm surprised at how much better they are than say, every vehicle segment in every fps ever. They're easy and simple, but the point of mixing up a game's variety isn't to brutally challenge the player, rather to break up the set pieces so you don't start to find the tedium.

So all of that is a little mediocre and probably why the game didn't go so well. On the other hand, the game is wonderfully immature in just the right way. The protagonist knows he's mostly fucked and voices his opinion in such a manner, a constant stream of goofy dick jokes and other high school levelbits. It's a sort of modern gallows humor that works exceedingly well within the game's setting. The planet you're on has been fucked sideways by human error and the story explaining what happened is actually much better than expected. There's some good development there and I actually found myself interested in the explanation of how everything got to go mad max style.

My favorite part is probably the female protagonist, simply because in a sea of immaturity, dick jokes and 'your robot side likes how I look in these pants' she isn't written as some goofball bimbo or shrieking nancy. The fact she didn't end up as sex object beyond being attractively drawn (but then so is the male lead) was really satisfying and helped keep the immaturity in the right quarter, but moreover the fact she's an important element to the progression of the story and the main character's "sort of" redemption works really well. Mostly because it is absolutely and completely unexpected.

She introduces herself by punching you in the face. Fresh!

For $5 I'm pretty satisfied with Bulletstorm. I don't know how the multiplayer is, since I'll never bother with it, but the campaign was fine for the five dollars. You can tell they put a ton of good honest effort in trying to keep the arenas fresh and interesting, with the bizarre ass resort world and its myriad of death traps properly varied.

I am going to have trouble watching Transformers Prime after hearing Blum make all those dick jokes, but oh well, Starscream is pretty goofy like that anyway.