Bioshock, in pieces, was a fantastic game. It included a simple but interesting skill tree, classic FPS mechanics, and creative weapons. It featured a sectoral but open level design. It had interesting and intriguing characters and back story. It’s narrative was well presented. But for all these nice touches, they didn’t mesh. Maybe I’m over thinking it, but I believe being critical of anything exposes why it was so good in the first place. Bioshock does not come together as a single whole or as one work. First of all, it was a lackluster RPG. Some people argue it was never an RPG to begin with, They say it was a Shooter. So why were the guns so arduous to shoot? Why was the game 25 hours? The reason a Shooter lasts at most 13 hours is because shooting for another ten is boring. If it was a Shooter, it was poorly paced. Another problem would be, why did we have free form character building, considering the ‘twist’ at the end? If I was a slave, I would be more concerned with kindly doing what I was asked, not wandering around for ADAM. And if I really was a slave all along, why did I do so much wandering? Now, I don’t know how you played the game, but me, I got into an area and the first thing I did was loot and kill everything I could. I even waited for respawns so I could get more. The only reason I ever progressed in the game was because the loading screen was the last door I hadn’t checked. For a slave, I do a piss poor job.

This was my biggest qualm with the game. They throw this dumb plot twist at you completely out of nowhere, like they were arguing with you, got you to swear and shouted “ha I made you swear!”. You walk through the last door in the area, which get’s blocked off once you do, and Fontaine comes on your comm shouting (in a very bad accent) “You were a slave”. Seriously? I couldn’t tell, I’ve been farming ADAM, I wanted to shoot bees, when did I become your slave? Maybe the RPG/Character Building stuff was too add a bit of irony to the situation. Hey, check out our customizable game experience, but wait! You were a slave all along! Maybe that was the case, but I don’t think so. I think Bioshock was trying to hard to be what people wanted it to be, instead of what IT wanted to be. They wanted to be like System Shock, because people loved System Shock. But they wanted it to be like Halo, because people love Halo. How do we combine the two? Keep the open-ish world and RPG elements, introduce the straightforward gunplay and level progression from Halo, 9.0s here I come! Obviously, and this is true with all products, there were compromises. They needed to sell the game, after all. But the game betrayed it’s own ideas. It’s own design. The game was not that intriguing to me. The only reason I made progress was because I was looking for more ADAM. I wanted to make Big Daddies kick other Big Daddy ass… Eventually I made it to the end, but not because I was being compelled by Fontaine’s nasty voice. Because I was trying to do something for me. Max out my stats.

The ability to choose to kill or let live the Little Sisters also betrayed the concept of the game. Just because Fontaine never said “would you kindly kill her” that doesn’t mean it fits right in. Fact is, giving me a dilemma like that (and so many times) contrasts the fact that I’m supposed to be going forward, following orders. I shouldn’t be stopping to choose to help or unhelp anyone. Why am I given a choice if I am a slave? The irony? On top of all this, the ADAM and plasmid system makes it most obvious. Why is my person being turned into whatever I’d like, at whatever points I’d like if I was just told to go to ______ or to collect ______? Why am I not following orders if I really am a slave? I think all this was poorly delivered. You could argue, “well the type of game they wanted to make wouldn’t guarantee the player followed the tracks we set so you have to take it with a grain of salt. Make a huge bottle, but ultimately come out at one narrow end”. Or you could design the game to play the way the story and characters develop. Linear. Tied to a goal without the choice to do other wise. Narrow paths, blocked exits, obvious directions and markings showing where you need to be. Then, you could unlock everything at the end, make it completely open when you stop taking Fontaine’s orders. That way the gameplay would mirror the design of the narrative.

Let’s look at Half Life 1 and 2. People say the plot of these games are not nearly as good as other people have made them out to be. What people do not realize is that Half Life is not just another shooter with a line stolen from every 1970s sci-fi book. It’s a First Person game. Not just a First Person Shooter, but a First Person game. Want to know why the story is so confusing? Because you don’t know what Breen and the slugs have been talking about, what Alyx and Eli and Kleiner have been up to for the last 10 or so years, what Judith does in secret, or what the Vortigaunts can see. You don’t know because you only have a pair of eyes. No ability to travel outside of your body and magically see what everyone else is talking about. The gameplay mirrored the narrative. It was a first person narrative. You got from the story exactly what Gordon had experienced. The gameplay was linear and the story farfetched because there were holes. You weren’t around to see or find out what happened, because you were in a vent instead of floating behind some Commanding Officer in a plane telling his men to kill everyone in Black Mesa. That’s why you don’t understand why the military is out to kill you. The game was designed superbly, and because Bioshock couldn’t take a hint, Half Life not only remains as one of the only games to do this, but probably the best game that’s done this, and to this day, is groundbreaking.

Now take a look at Shadow Of The Colossus. Everything about SotC was designed to push certain feelings and ellicit certain reactions. Why was the world so big? So you would feel small. Why were the Colossi so colossal? So you would feel helpless. Why was their no music outside of the fights? So you would feel lonely. Why was the colour so monotonous? So you would feel sad. Despite having an open world, there was next to nothing to do besides go to the next colossus. Why was there a never a direct route to getting to them (besides the first)? So you could see how much landscape there was, so you could see how insignificant you are. This game featured 3 story cinematics. The starting, the middle, and the end. Somehow, this game pushed more story, more consistently and more powerfully than any game I can think of before it and after it. Players who weren’t paying attention and who didn’t finish it passed it off as being empty and lacking any story at all. How does that explain the wikipages? The discussion that go on every night on some forum about it’s plot and it’s meaning? The game had a very healthy amount of plot considering dialogue was at a minimum and the only two conversations are between the main character and Dormin, and the shaman and his gaurds. The world and the experience and visuals told the story. Wanders deteriorating through out the game, the doves appearing by Mono, the statues counting down, the ruins strewn about the world, all of it told a story, thousands and thousands of years in the making. SotC is the perfect example of design and focus. Made with a purpose and it achieved so much more then people give it credit.

But for whatever reason, the broken Bioshock is selling millions and topping the rankings. I had fun turning the Big Daddies on eachother, I won’t lie. Hacking sentries was cool. The propaganda was funny. But, like I said earlier, seen in pieces the game is fantastic, but as a whole, it failed. Bioshock looked nice. It was well dressed in it’s novelty world. But deep inside it, where it all began on paper, it’s design failed.

When I first bought World of Goo on the Wii Shop (after hearing about it from some friends), I thought it wouldn’t be that spectacular. I mean how much fun can you have if all you’re doing is building towers to get goo balls into pipes? The answer: a whole lot. The game progresses in such a way that even if you get frustrated with one of the levels, you’ll keep trying and trying out of sheer satisfaction. One of the great things about World of Goo that as you start the game doesn’t give you any instructions, it just starts you out and says “here are some balls, get to it” , and because you have only your intuition and brains to go on, victory is that much sweeter.

Though the game lacks any real difficulty levels such as the traditional easy, medium, hard, there are OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) achievements which offer both a challenge and a level of replayability. Some of them are downright evil, and you’ll be cutting corners all around, cranking the risk of failure to the max just to reach the OCD requirement. Another feature that adds a beautiful amount of replayability is the Goo tower that you can build with the goo balls you save during your escapes around the world. Here is the mutiplayer of the game, the building of the Goo tower to defeat other people’s record heights, it works like a highscore system, and you’ll be tempted to come back now and again to try to build your tower higher.

Even though World of Goo is a two dimensional game, the graphics are unique in their own style and direction. You see a type of cartoon-y game, however it’s not all happy-sunshine-fun-times-ahead, it’s more of a serious tone that’s complemented by the plot. Yes, this game does have a plot, and though it’s not too clear to me, it seems that you are the person collecting the goos for the corporation while also finding ways to stop the corporation from harvesting goo balls. The details are a bit fuzzy for me.

Add on top of all this beautifuly composed music, and a crazy sign painter who leaves clues in a mysterious, yet somewhat humorous way, and you’ve got  yourself World of Goo. It’s priced at a fair 20 dollars (through Steam), and you’d be right in buying it if you had the money. If you want to check it out, you can always play the demo to experience it for yourself.

You can even get the whole official soundtrack for it free from the creators now.

With Free Radical (who is...Ahem, was behind the Battlefront series,) being in trouble, who knows when, or even if Battlefront 3 will come into fruition.

However, if you’re looking for a similar kind of experience in the mean time, Pandemic Studios has been working on Lord of the Rings: Conquest. With unit classes, “Hero” units, and zone capturing galore, it seems to be shaping up as a fun package.

After reading up some info, I downloaded the PS3 version demo of it. Right away, after reading from several sites how it paralleled Battlefront, I immediately saw what they were talking about. Prior to spawning, you could choose from any of the 4 available classes. After picking a zone to spawn at, you’d appear on the map ready for action. Upon death, you were simply returned to the class selection screen, and were able to return to the battlefield after a brief respawn countdown.

Pertaining to the classes themselves, the Warrior, Scout, Archer, and Mage all seemed to have their place on the battlefield, aside from a few balance issues which I hope will be addressed before the game actually hits shelves. (I’m looking at you, Mages!) One gameplay element that stood out to me was the fact that Warrior’s couldn’t swing their sword while moving, while Archer’s could fire arrows, laugh, mock and run circles around you at the same time. As said, we’ll see what changes between now, release, and the future.

YOU...SHALL NOT...PASS!!!

While it seems to be a promising hack n’ slash, the game feels somewhat clunky in its execution and presentation. However, if you’re a fan of the Battlefront series and enjoy the Lord of the Rings universe, I’d give this one a whirl. There’s a demo available via PSN and Xbox Live for the PS3 and Xbox 360, respectively. A PC version will also be released, though there is no demo currently out for it. Look for the full game to be released in the U.S. and Europe this month.

Potential PC buyers may be interested in these minimum system  requirements, which were posted by the Administrator sledgehammer90 on the Pandemic forums.

FOR WINDOWS XP SP2 or Windows Vista
* 2.4 GHz Core Duo processor or equivalent
* 1 GB RAM
* A 256 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 3.0 – nvidia 7800 or equivelent
* The latest version of DirectX 9.0c
* A DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
* At least 6 GB of hard drive space for installation.

*Don't try and read the text, its in another language for some reason.

Ok so I was talking to a buddy of mine and he started talking about how easy and unimpressive twilight princess was. Ok, that’s the opinion of most long-term Zelda fans. Then I said “You know we need more games like Ocarina of Time” (and I might have mentioned Majora’s Mask but most people dislike that game, huh). So of course he then proceeded to ask the question that is the core of this article

“Wait, what’s so great about Ocarina of Time?”

I had nothing to say of course, because I jumped the gun in saying we need more OOTS simply because I am a nostalgia-goggles wearing fan boy. However I sat down later that day and thought for a while, what does make that game so awesome?

Let’s analyze here:

1. Awesome dungeons, most on a normal to hard difficulty (water temple anybody?)
2. The fun side questing and bonuses, these deserve their own list
   • Big Goron Sword quest
   • Catching Poes (especially the damn elusive Big Poes) for the Poe salesman
   • Doing the mask shop side quests (bunny hood ftw)
   • Fishing Hut (Hylian Loach anyone?)
   • House of Skulltula
   • Coco catching game at ranch
   • Epona track challenge
   • Treasure game in Hyrule
   • Shooting gallery
   • Etc.
3. The bonuses and hidden items such as talking to the gossip stones or using the Megaton hammer trick to find underground areas
4. The awesome boss battles
5. The awesome music
6. The implementation of a cool new system such as the ocarina songs
7. The ever valiant challenge of trying to get all the empty bottles (yes I felt this was a big enough bonus to have its own section)

The above list is really a number of simplified reasons of why that game was awesome when it came out, and why I still hear people going “Yea I just got OOTS, I know I’m late to the scene but I’ve been playing it and its really fun!”

As for Navi, and characters similar to her, come on, it’s not that bad guys, they aren’t that annoying (Hey! Listen!). Besides the player needs guidance sometimes, and it comes in handy when they tell you the enemies’ weakness. The only real Navi-like character that I hated was Tatl, she was a B*tch.

"look at me! I'm a big tough stupid fairy who is a meanie to you for half the game!"

Now as for ways they could make the Zelda franchise better, unrelated to the successful Ocarina of Time, here are some issues they could fix up on.

-Voice acting! Hello!? No Link, we don’t mean grunts and growls when we say voice acting.

-Better weapon system! I don’t want to keep pausing and switching weapons and then pause and switch again. They should implement the Half-Life system, where what key and how many times you press it on the control pad (or D-pad) applies the weapon, set to that key and number press.

That’s about all there is to my rave. Yeah everybody else of course is going to have their own opinions on what to add and improve on, but those were mine.

]]> http://giantenemyblog.com/lotz-the-missing-factors/feed/ 0 http://giantenemyblog.com/microsoft-sam-reviews-wheel-of-fortune/ http://giantenemyblog.com/microsoft-sam-reviews-wheel-of-fortune/#comments Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:00:05 +0000 Seanpk21 http://gamerblag.com/?p=2156 Microsoft Sam loves video games, especially old ones. Join him each week as he reviews his favorite classic games. This week he reviews Wheel of Fortune for the NES.

The game is based around timing.

That’s why the game is so popular amongst everyone, the hardcore and casual crowd alike: the gameplay is unique. It fused the standard run and gun affair with a brand new take: timing, not skill. It requires analysis, practice and endless trial and error before you have a masterful understanding of it. It’s a brilliant game in this sense, and it gets my love for it. I think it deserve more attention payed to its multiplayer aspect, where gameplay reigns supreme, instead of its joke of a story and singlepayer. This is the reason that the game is still the best over-the-shoulder shooting game to date. It knew what it was doing, and its entire gameplay styling was focused and pushed to this angle, whether they knew it or not. Balance issues aside, the mechanics of this game are unique and absolutely spectacular in comparison to the generic rehashing and reusing of die hard, trusted mechanics, that FPS games have suffered from for so long. That’s why people love it, they just don’t realise it yet.

Originally, Bilzzard had titles prepared for those who hit 80 first with each player class. This would be extremely unique titles – only one person per server could have each. The community went completely up in arms about this, as almost every player complained about the repercussions of such an attempt. By giving a reward for being first, Blizzard was promoting the fact that people were cutting class and calling in sick to work to play the new expansion. That people would be getting physically sick by not sleeping for days to get these titles. Or so, this is what players complained about. The complaining worked, and Blizzard pulled the titles, making them unavailable to everyone. They left in the “Feats of Strength”, or so they’re called – these are achievements that reward nothing. Nothing. At all. You get bragging rights – that’s it. Most players would be completely turned off from these. They’d think “well, what’s the point?” and move on to something else.

But not all players thought this way. These two players are Athene, a human female paladin, and Nymh, a human female warlock. There has been a rather big debate over who is the first level 80.
Nymh’s plan was rather simple: She joined up with a healer friend of his, Pavelomm, who stayed out of the group and got no XP for anything, sacrificing his time for his friend, so she could be the first 80. Then, they camped the crypt in Drakil’ji Ruins for 27 hours. For over a full day, they sat and killed enemies over. And over. And over for 27 straight hours. Officially, she was the first level 80.

However, some players consider Athene as the first level 80. He hit level 79 in 13 and a half hours. So, how did he lose? After all, it couldn’t have taken another 13.5 to get from 79 to 80, right? Well, I’m glad you asked! It’s simple, really.

He was banned for cheating, and had his character reset to 70. His tactic was a bit shadier. His tactic was to join a group with four of his guild mates. He would enter an instance with them, then leave the group. He would then have 60 seconds to attack enemies, or the game would remove him from the instance. This would “tag” them to his group – but since he left the group, only he was considered to “own” that enemy. He would then rejoin his group to reset the removal timer, then kill the enemies. Since he was out of the group when they were first hit, his group members had no claim to the enemies, meaning Athene earned ALL of the experience instead of having to share it with his group mates. Using this idea, he was able to sky rocket to 79 within just 13.5 hours. To the right is a screen shot that Athene claims was from a GM, who confirmed that it would be okay for them to do this, that there was no chance of getting banned. However, on the left is a screen shot of a different GM banning them.

Is this an exploit, or is it just clever? Either way, one thing is certain: Nymh is the first level 80. Some argue that Athene should have claims to the “world first” level 80, because he got to 79 the fastest and would have been the first 80 by literally hours was he not banned – but others counterargue that it doesn’t matter if he would have, because he wasn’t.