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(05/07/14 3:10pm)
This is my last column for the Middlebury Campus, so I decided to write something a little bit different than my usual game review. With the arrival of the new console generation, the recent surge of independent game releases, and the ongoing debates about games as an artistic medium, I figured that maybe it was time to write a short piece on how I see the state of games.
Gamers and game designers have fought for years over the idea of “Games as Art”. Some argue that, like any creative medium, games deserve proper artistic respect and recognition. Others argue that defining games as art might ruin the fun. For those outside of the community, those who only see the big, Call of Duty style releases, it is hard to understand what could be artistic about games. At face value, games seem to be violent, shallow experiences only intended to dazzle and entertain.
Games, as I see them, are just barely out of their adolescence. Games began as the simple diversions that most people see them as. A game like Pong might provide hours of entertainment, but an art piece it is not. Arcades and home consoles continued to push the envelope technologically from there, allowing for fuller, more complex experiences, yet games continued to exist primarily for their entertainment value. Most games focused on challenges, battles, conflicts. Games liked to focus on heroes saving princesses or sole soldiers winning wars; however, as technology has improved, and the techniques of gaming storytelling have become more nuanced, something new has started to emerge.
The first game that spoke to me on a narrative level was Kingdom Hearts for the Playstation 2. A mash up of Disney and Final Fantasy characters, Kingdom Hearts was not exactly subtle, but it showed me how a game story can contain emotional weight. Its most impactful moment took place about three-fourths of the way through the game. The main character, Sora is stripped of his powers and his friends. The player must then guide the enfeebled Sora through the most challenging level they have faced with only The Beast (from “Beauty and the Beast”, naturally) to help them. This segment made me feel the same weakness that Sora felt, the same frustration. Kingdom Hearts did not invent this technique, but it introduced it to me: the idea that the gameplay can tell the story even more effectively than narrative scenes.
Not every game has adopted this technique, but it is starting to crop up more and more. Games like Journey, Shadow of the Colossus, Minecraft, Dark Souls, and Metro 2033 all present their stories through their gameplay, encouraging the players to feel the same emotions and desires that the protagonists feel. I am not trying to say that this technique is the only important one in the game designer’s arsenal, just that the increased use of the technique is a sign of gaming’s maturation. As we come into the 21st century, we are seeing more games, and more mainstream games, that are utilizing gameplay focused storytelling.
So, if gaming has come out of its adolescence, it is settling down now into its teenage years. It is experimenting with some new ideas, some of which are good, some of which are bad, but it still has a way to go to reach full maturity and acceptance. Gaming does still face some attacks from the outside.
Now and again someone will try to censor a game, or pass a law to protect the kids, but these complaints are coming across as increasingly anachronistic.
What is truly holding gaming back right now is the gaming community itself. We all have heard or experienced the horror stories of Xbox Live chat, or gamers freaking out over small details that they dislike in games. In some ways, these reactions can be written off as those of immature children. In other cases, it is hard to shrug off the abuse and venom as mere childish complaints. When Mass Effect 3 came out, somebody tried to sue Bioware because they did not like the ending. When Anita Sarkeesian began work on her “Tropes vs. Women in Videogames” series, people sent her rape and death threats. Seriously, check out some online news stories about “Tropes vs. Women.” It is horrifying stuff. These are not the reactions of a mature community. These are the reactions of entitled, angry children who think that they should have whatever they want, exactly when they want it.
The good news is that it is easy to be a part of the solution. Game designers, especially in the independent market, have shown a willingness to make more nuanced games that can be rightfully called art. Gamers have shown a willingness to buy these games and to play them right alongside the mass of fantastic entertainment games that are coming out as well. It is a great time to be a gamer. All we have to do to be a part of the solution is enjoy. If someone wants to make a game, and you don’t like it, that’s fine. There are hundreds more games out there for you. If someone wants to criticize games, you don’t have to fight them. We are not a harassed minority group in need of defense. Gaming is starting to come into its own, both in terms of quality of experience, and acceptance in the world, it is time for gamers to come into their own along with it. Kick back, be cool to the people that you play with and enjoy the ride.
(04/16/14 8:33pm)
I had tracked the dragon all the way to the outskirts of the Volcano, and now it was time for our final showdown. Sulfurous fumes blew into my eyes, and the heat of the air made me grateful for the Cool Drinks I had brought in my pack. I shifted my grip on my Gunlance, checking it for ammunition. Breathing heavily to calm my shaking hands, I stepped towards the beast. It spotted me, reared its head back, and roared. I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Dude, you have to write your article.” How could I write the article, I hadn’t played a new game in a couple of weeks. “Just review this one, you never shut up about the thing anyways.” Oh yeah. That is a good idea.
“This thing” is known as Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (MH3U for those in the know). Released on December 10, 2011 for the Nintendo Wii U and the 3DS, it is not exactly a new game, but it has utterly consumed my time since I picked it up in December. At first glance, MH3U might seem like a fairly straightforward game: the player hunts monsters, carves their bodies up to make new weapons and armor, and then hunts stronger monsters. Simple, right? As the player continues to fight stronger and stronger monsters, they can increase their rank and progress the single-player story. If they want to play with friends, the player can head out to the online area to face even tougher challenges.
Once you actually get into the game, however, it is anything but simple. For one, there are twelve weapon types, all with unique styles and strategies. Now, when I say unique, I do mean unique. While some weapons are similar to one another, each one operates using different controls and combos and is useful for very different things. The aforementioned Gunlance, is a fairly fast hitting weapon that can be used to stab a monster and has short range gunfire built in for extra damage. The player moves very slowly while holding it and must block and dodge appropriately to keep up momentum. The Hammer on the other hand is a weapon without a block, but with fairly decent movement speed that is based around charging up attacks for one high damage smash.
Does the game explain any of this nuance? Not really. To figure out how to play I had to spend about 30 minutes watching a general tutorial on Youtube that taught me the basics of missions structure, crafting items and gear, and gameplay progression. From there, I had to watch another video to explain how the Gunlance worked, and then I felt just about ready to begin. The game starts the player off slowly by tasking them with gathering ingredients for items such as Potions, and then ramps it up with some easy monster fights. These fights give the player time to get a feel for their chosen weapon(s) and stock up on some much needed supplies. If all this makes MH3U sound like a fairly standard RPG, it is not. The player character does not level up, the only things that get better are the player’s skills and their gear.
This brings us to the main sticking point of MH3U: it is really hard and really time consuming. Each fight is tough and preparing for battle by gathering resources and crafting new gear will take a long time. Add that to the time it takes to master a given weapon and you can see how I have 150 hours logged in the game since December. The thing is though, I am not slowing down. If anything I feel like the game has only gotten more fun as time has gone on. I can feel myself getting better at it, and as I unlock more challenges and continue to hunt these giant beasts alongside my friends, I feel compelled to keep playing and to keep improving. MH3U is a game that epitomizes the ideal of “play”. The story is limited in text, and really comes down to what you do as a player. I never reminisce with my monster hunting buddies about characters in the game or prewritten cut scenes. We discuss how we took down the Brachydios for the first time, how the Stygian Zinogre almost brought us to our knees, and that one hilarious time we almost lost to a Great Jaggi. MH3U is a game about the player and their journey. It takes some work to get to that fun, but man oh man is it worth it.
This review can apply to pretty much any entry in the Monster Hunter series. This game is out on the Wii U and the 3DS right now, but if you want to grab one with online play on the 3DS you could wait for Monster Hunter 4, or you could harken back to games of old on a PS2 or PSP. The PlayStation Vita even has one of the old PSP games available on it if you happen to be one of the few folks that owns a Vita. Monster Hunter games are not for everyone. They are hard, they demand a lot of your time and for some people the lack of meaningful story will be a turn off. But if you want to experience what is close to gaming perfection, MH3U might be a good place to start.
(03/19/14 3:12pm)
In 2013, Harebrained Schemes kickstarted Shadowrun: Returns, their first title. Billed as a successor to the classic SNES game, Shadowrun Returns offered up two main options for players: they could create their own content using the built-in story editor, or they could play the campaigns released by Harebrained Schemes. The game’s first story, Dead Man’s Switch felt a little empty. With no fixed party for the player to interact with and a fairly linear story, player choice felt limited and not particularly meaningful. It still provided an entertaining story set in an interesting universe, but it did not make me feel like I had much impact on the story.
Shadowrun Returns’ new campaign, however, does. Entitled Dragonfall, the new story not only improves upon the foundation that Dead Man’s Switch laid, but also presents one of the most engaging stories I have ever experienced in a game. The beginning of the game is standard enough. The player creates a character who can be one of five races (human, elf, dwarf, ork, troll), and picks one of six premade classes (Street Samurai, Mage, Decker, Shaman, Rigger, Physical Adept) or creates their own. The setup to the story is that the player character has gotten themselves into trouble in their old home city, and flees to Berlin at the behest of their old friend Monika. What exactly that trouble is and why the player character decided to head to Berlin can be decided by the player in later conversations. Without giving too much away, the first mission sets up the dynamic between the player and their fellow Shadowrunners (the name given to elite mercenaries who undertake dangerous and often dirty jobs), and gives the player an introduction to the turn-based combat system. Everything seems to go off without a hitch, until unforeseen circumstances force the player to take command of the team of Shadowrunners, as well as the neighborhood that they live in.
This setup is where Dragonfall really shines. Their characters are some of the best-written in the business, and the neighborhood and its inhabitants come to life as you explore it. Within an hour of play time, I felt completely responsible for these people, and each decision I made after that point felt weighty and nerve-wracking. It helped that Dragonfall also throws your small team into a highly dangerous conflict that they have almost no hope of surviving. With these high stakes and the well-presented characters and choices, Dragonfall immersed me in the world in a way that few other games of the genre have. I stuck by my decisions, and I made them because I thought they were the best calls, not to fill out a karma slider or to get the best ending. With no alignment system and with well-written protagonist dialogue, I felt like a part of the world, and a part of that struggle.
Unfortunately, while immersion is where Dragonfall really shines, it is also where it has some trouble. Shadowrun Returns is set in the same universe as the long-running tabletop game Shadowrun. As such, the game possesses an extensive background fiction which is often not properly explained. Acronyms and terms are thrown around with no explanation, and even the gameplay seems to assume that you understand the way the tabletop works. While the game does tell you that only experienced players should attempt to create their own class, it also does a poor job explaining what it means to be a Decker, or how a Street Samurai can be effective out of combat, or why I would specialize in pistols instead of assault rifles. While many RPGs struggle with teaching the player how to build a character, it can be especially frustrating in Shadowrun Returns when combined with the somewhat confusing backstory of that universe.
That being said, those issues are not anywhere near large enough to hurt this game all that much. They are merely a small blemish on an otherwise excellent experience, one that people versed in Shadowrun lore will not have to worry about. I personally opened up a wiki in another window and took a look at that when I really needed something explained, or just gleaned the important information from the dialogue.
Shadowrun Returns offers players quite a bit. The starting package includes the suite of creation tools as well as the Dead Man’s Switch campaign for a cool $19.99. The Dragonfall expansion costs another $14.99 on top of that, and gives the player a new campaign and the content creator some new toys to play with. While the original package easily justifies its expense with a decent campaign in Dead Man’s Switch and a suite of campaign design tools, Dragonfall seals the deal, even as it brings the price up. If you are a fan of Bioware games, the Shadowrun tabletop game or RPGs in general, this is not one to miss.
(03/05/14 10:12pm)
I don’t like real-time strategy games very much. Turn-based ones like Fire Emblem occasionally entertain me, but for the most part I prefer to play games where you only control one character, or maybe a small group. As such, Banished is not the kind of game I would usually consider playing. As a top-down city- building simulator, Banished should never have appealed to me and seemed destined to slip past my radar. That is, until I got my hands on the thing.
My big problem with playing strategy games is that there are too many little people to control all at once and I can’t make them fight properly and oh god I forgot about the buildings and what the hell is a pylon, how do I even make tanks?! There is a lot going on is what I am saying.
Banished slows all of that chaos way down. For one thing, there is no fighting in the game. Each game starts on a randomly generated map with a small group of villagers. Banished from their previous homes, the villagers must build a new town in which to survive. No bandits attack the town; no monsters or wild beasts stalk the forests. All that needs to concern the player is the resources they must gather and the buildings that need building. To do this, the player merely marks an area on the map to gather resources or clicks on spots where they want buildings built. They can then go into the menu and assign some villagers to those jobs, and the villagers automatically go to work.
All that is left then is to sit back and wait until the player needs to manipulate something else about the town. If the player isn’t too keen on watching a bunch of digital villagers gather wood and raise houses, the game has an option to speed up time. And the beauty of Banished is this simplicity of gameplay. Once you get some resources flowing and have a stable source of food, your town will be able to make it through the winters and you just need to keep up with the pace of growth. There is no win condition except surviving and growing your small settlement into a grand town that you can be proud of.
This is not to say that the game is not challenging, because it certainly is. The three starting difficulties merely grant you a different number of starting resources. “Easy” is quite liberal with its starting resources, even building you some houses to get you going. “Normal” is where I spend most of my time, and it grants you enough resources to be able to muddle through the first winter or so without panicking. The “Hard” difficulty is where things get tricky. On this level you barely have any resources and the villagers have just departed the cart they came in on. With no buildings and few resources, the player will need to play strategically in order to keep their banished families fed and sheltered through the first year’s winter. Even once you have gotten past the starting difficulty, spikes in population or natural disasters can wreak havoc on a town, requiring some quick thinking and careful planning to survive.
When all is said and done though, it is not the game’s difficulty that drew me to Banished. Instead, it is the stories that the game is capable of telling. While the only pre-written narrative that the game will give you is that your villagers are banished, the mechanics allow you to create and discover your own narratives within the game. I built some new houses in my town the other day so that the kids who were coming of age could move out of their parents’ houses.
A ten-year-old girl immediately occupied one of the houses. She lived alone for a full three years before marrying (the game takes place in the Middle Ages — it was a different time), and the entire time she was the town’s only merchant, dealing with the traders from the outside world all on her own. It was a random moment that I had not planned, but one that drew me so much deeper into the game. Suddenly, alongside the groups of faceless villagers, I had a connection to one person within the village: this spunky ten year old who decided to be a merchant. Every time she made a sale it brought a bit of a smile to my face. Call me sappy or ridiculous, but moments like that make Banished well worth the $20 price of admission. And hey, the whole game was created by one guy, so that is pretty cool too. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a town to run.
(02/19/14 9:33pm)
The past few years have been a rotten time for local multiplayer video games. Big name franchises have been shifting focus to online multiplayer, sometimes dropping their local multiplayer altogether. Last year, when I popped open my brand new copy of SSX for the PS3, I found that EA had decided not to include any kind of local mutiplayer play in this version of the game. This came as a surprise to me, as all the previous versions of the game had included a local competition mode, and it did not seem like its omission added anything to the SSX experience. I played a lot of SSX’s online mode, but it never scratched the same itch.
Fortunately, I can report that the past year has stood witness to a rebirth of the local multiplayer game. Titles like Divekick, Nidhogg, Samurai Gunn and the upcoming Starwhal are providing the kinds of frantic, easy to learn experiences that go off great at parties (or at least at the kind of parties I attend).
First up, Nidhogg: Loosely described as a fencing tug of war game, Nidhogg pits two players armed with swords against one another. Each player is trying to slay their opponent and move past them in order to be eaten by the titular Nidhogg and claim victory. Whoever scored the last kill is the player trying to move to the other side of the screen. To accomplish this goal, players can swordfight their opponents directly, throw their swords at them, punch and kick them, or simply run by. Nidhogg games can get pretty heated, and of all the games listed in this article it is the one that is most prone to Smash Brothers Syndrome (a condition in which one friend gets too good at the game and ruins everyone else’s fun). If you can avoid that dangerous scenario, however, Nidhogg presents a totally unique take on the 1v1 fighting game, and can make for hours of good fun.
Samurai Gunn provides a slightly different experience. While it also involves sword fighting and platforming in a 2D environment, Samurai Gunn operates at a much more insane pace. Allowing up to four players, Samurai Gunn hands each character a sword and a gun with three bullets. Each character receives three new bullets every time they respawn. As one hit is all it takes to slay an opponent, the game play in Samurai Gunn becomes a frantic, screaming mess pretty quickly. With players dying and respawning left and right, and bullets flying across the screen, it can be pretty hard to get used to playing such a high energy game. Once you have a handle on the controls, however, Samurai Gunn is incredibly rewarding. Baiting your friend into swinging too early and jumping past her slash to take her out with one of your own, or successfully getting the drop on another friend just as he finishes off another player is hilariously fun. The manic pace at which the whole game operates and the insanity of its various stages means that even good players can have a bad game, and bad ones can sometimes get into a serious groove. With its simple controls and objectives, and short game times, Samurai Gunn makes for an excellent party game.
Starwhal, the last new game on this list, might be the finest example of a sword fighting game I have ever played. While Nidhogg and Samurai Gunn have actual sword fighting in them, Starwhal simulates the experience so much better. Again allowing for four players, Starwhal casts everyone as narwhals in space. Each narwhal is trying to stab the others in the heart with their tusks. The controls, while simple, take a bit of getting used to. You press a button to move forward, and can swing your tusk left and right to change directions or stab someone’s heart as they move past. You are never in full control of your narwhal, but that doesn’t really matter. The feel of the game is so spot on, and the way the characters flip and wiggle across the screen is alternately amusing and awesome. Flipping over opponents, pulling off successful baits and switches, executing a perfectly timed cross-stage charge—all of these moments make playing Starwhal with a group of friends a fantastically good time. It is a pretty stupid game, the controls are difficult, and that is exactly the way it should be.
All of these games invoke a similar spirit. Each one provides easy to learn, often manic and often loud fun. They are little bottles of joy that you can share with friends, and each has a suite of well-designed mechanics to keep you interested. As they are all indie titles, they also come quite cheap, and Starwhal has a free demo on its website. With these games already out, and titles like Towerfall and Sportsfriends hitting the PC (and the PS3 in the case of Sportsfriends) in the near future, this trend promises to continue for at least a little while longer. So grab yourself some friends and a few beers and have yourselves a rip-roaring good time.
(01/19/14 11:53pm)
Both the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One made their debuts earlier this holiday season, ushering in the next generation of video game consoles. With each company vying for early supremacy and gamers around the world chomping at the bit for information on the two new machines, I did what any responsible game reviewer would do: I went out and bought a Wii U.
Nintendo released the console in November 2012 to resounding “meh”. Dismissed as a gimmick by hardcore gamers who felt burned by the original Wii, the Wii U had trouble finding an audience outside of die-hard Nintendo fans. Fast forward a year or so, and Nintendo has had time to fill out the Wii U’s library to respectable levels and it only looks to be getting better. I figured it was time to give the console a shot.
While the two main competing consoles are vying for technical supremacy, Nintendo has stuck to what it knows best and made a console with some unique features that will allow for more interesting game design. In this case the touch pad controller is this console’s claim to fame. The controller sports all of the buttons that most gamers will expect on a controller, but swaps out smooth triggers for more traditional shoulder buttons.
The first game I picked up was Super Mario 3D World. Mario’s latest outing is a joy to play, and despite some frustrating holdover mechanics (can we get rid of lives, please?) the game is a must have for any Wii U owner. While the majority of the game consists of fairly standard Mario platforming, some sections of the game require the player to manipulate the environment by touching parts of it on the screen, or blowing onto the microphone. These moments flow quite well with the rest of the gameplay, and satisfied my need for a game that actually used my fancy new controller.
After finishing up most of 3D Land, I decided to take a look at Rayman: Legends, the sequel to the excellent Rayman: Origins. Legends features the co-op platforming that its predecessor did, but with an added bonus. Some levels require one of the players to take the Wii U Controller and play as a frog fairy named Murphy to manipulate the environment. This might sound similar to 3D Land’s use of the gamepad, and it is, but Legends executes the idea so much better. While early levels have the players navigating the environment by cutting ropes and stunning invulnerable enemies, later stages include more complicated segments such as the one where Murphy has to keep the rest of the players hidden from lasers. Playing these levels with friends provides a manic, but somehow doable co-op experience that you will not find anywhere else.
While I did not get to play more than a couple of games using the touch pad, I quite enjoyed the games I did play. That being said, there are some noticeable downsides to Nintendo’s focus on innovation over technology.
Because the Wii U is more comparable in power to an Xbox 360 or a Playstation 3 than it is to the next gen consoles, it will most likely not be able to run many of the new titles hitting store shelves in the upcoming years. That means that if you are going to want to play any of those games, you are going to have to shell out for one of the other consoles, or a powerful PC. The Wii U is far and away the most interesting home console out there right now, and Nintendo is making strides to make it a console that can appeal to casual and hardcore gamers alike. On the other hand, it will most likely not be able to run the slew of new games that come out for the Next Gen consoles.
Nintendo has produced a respectable library for the Wii U, but it is up in the air as to whether they will be able to support it in the future. As for whether you should buy one of these things, I can only give you a resounding “maybe”. If the games keep on coming out for it, it will probably give you some of the most enjoyable and interesting titles you will see this generation. If not, your Wii U might end up gathering dust.
Even with that risk, I love this console so far, and if you are willing to bet on some more interesting games coming out, the Wii U will not disappoint. I hope.
(11/20/13 11:06pm)
Here in the last third of the semester, we all find ourselves a little crunched for time. As much as I would like to play a bunch of long games, I just don’t have the time what with all of my final papers and, as I explained two weeks ago, Pokémon. This kind of environment is where smaller indie games become my bread and butter. So here are a few of the bite sized computer games that I have played lately that can be played between bouts of studying madness.
Space Engineers
Available on Steam for $15, Space Engineers is a game in Early Access Alpha. Early Access games are still being developed, but you can buy them right now if you want to have some input on the development process. While the Early Access program often produces some questionable titles, Space Engineers holds up its end of the bargain.
The concept of the game is evident in the title. You are an engineer in space and you can build ships and space stations. In this Early Access version, players are all set in creative mode, giving them unlimited resources to build their creations. Normally, I don’t get into these kinds of games. Minecraft is a lot of fun, but I only ever enjoy the game on Survival, when I have some kind of opposition. This mode does not yet exist in Space Engineers, but I still found myself wiling away a few hours building ships entirely from thrusters or crafting obstacle courses out of gravity generators.
Space Engineers is shaping up to be a great game, and if you have any love for other crafting video games, this is an easy sell. The range of tools available already, and the cool guns and gadgets that should be coming out soon, make it both robust and ridiculous, allowing for both impressive and impressively stupid creations.
Risk of Rain
The term “Roguelike” gets thrown around a lot in gaming culture these days. A roguelike is a game that features a high degree of challenge, randomization and permanent character death. Risk of Rain has added co-operative play to the formula. Up to four players are dropped into a gorgeous alien world where they must shoot their way through various mystical and bizarre enemies, claiming a host of power-ups on the way.
Risk of Rain’s major addition to the Roguelike formula is its use of time. As you play through the game, a difficulty bar on the right side of the screen steadily increases. Each time it goes up another notch, the number and strength of the enemies increase. This means that players must collect power- ups and levels at a blinding pace in order to be strong enough for the next difficulty tier, but they must also spend enough time fighting to be powerful enough to take on the boss at the end of each level. Finding this balance is what makes Risk of Rain so hectic and fun with friends.
This game is very much designed around co-op, and I had substantially less fun with the game on my own. Luckily, you can play the game locally with friends by attaching more than one controller to your PC. At $10 on Steam, Risk of Rain will provide a solid amount of frustrated, yet gleeful fun.
One Finger Death Punch
This is probably the most raw fun I have had with a game all year. One Finger Death Punch is a simple game. Your character stands in the center of the screen as enemies approach from both sides. You click with the left and right buttons to punch the left and right enemies, respectively. This simple concept is used brilliantly to create one of the most visceral and exciting action games I have ever played. As new enemy types and skills are introduced the levels become more frantic and impressive. One miss timed click can lead to an early demise, while a perfect run will make you leap with joy. One Finger Death Punch is a fantastic game, and it is easy to open it up and play for a few minutes to take your mind off the humdrum, non-kung-fu-fueled world that we live in.
One Finger Death Punch is available on Desura right now for two dollars, so there is basically no excuse not to buy it. Seriously. Google it right now, let it change your life as it did mine.
(11/06/13 9:33pm)
“So, are you a boy or a girl?” Moments after being asked this question by a suave man in a lab coat, I was tossed out into Kalos to begin my adventure in Pokémon X. I picked my starter, a Froakie (obviously), and soon found myself giggling like a kid again as I tromped through the world, capturing and battling any Pokémon that I could find.
If you are a fan of the series you should stop reading and keep playing because you already have these games. If you are an old fan who has fallen off the bandwagon, or someone looking into Pokémon for the first time, these games have a lot to offer.
If the Pokémon series has ever been consistently criticized for one thing, it is stagnation. “They’re just the same games over and over again!” cry some. In a way, they are right. Pokémon games all follow a tried and true formula. You will be presented with the same starter types, introduced to a rival or two, and face off against gym leaders and some sort of criminal team before finally confronting the Elite Four and becoming the Champion.
Each game offers some new wrinkles and updates, but the basic formula remains the same. If this formula does not appeal to you, I cannot honestly recommend X and Y. While the game boasts a slew of new features which make the experience both on and offline all the more captivating, you will still be tasked with the same goals and challenged by similar obstacles.
Where X and Y shine is in their ability to make the Pokémon formula feel fresh. Earlier games in the series had notoriously slow starts, requiring a good hour or two of play before the real game began. X and Y start at a breakneck pace, handing you a starter and some Pokéballs and releasing you into the world pretty much from the get go.
From there, you will notice that Kalos is home to an almost ridiculous array of Pokémon. Every route is packed full of monsters from every generation of games, allowing you to build a varied team right away. The first chunk of the game is quite spread out, giving you time to adventure and enjoy the world. As you progress, the game’s pacing speeds up by reducing time between gyms as your character hardens their resolve to face off against the Elite Four. The pace of the story allowed me to enjoy my wanderings at the beginning of the game, and by the time I felt ready to be done with the story and move on to creating a competitive team, the pace had accelerated enough for me to do so quickly.
Pokémon X and Y’s most noticeable change is their move to fully 3D graphics. Making the most out of the more powerful 3DS hardware, Game Freak created fully animated models of every Pokémon which replace the old two dimensional sprites. The battles and world look phenomenal. My favorite Pokémon designs came to life through the new graphics, and I found a new appreciation for some Pokémon I was previously not so fond of. The battle scenes also make use of new attack animations, and the whole thing feels snappy and fast paced.
The new graphical style is accompanied by greater freedom of movement using the 3DS’ circle pad and your character’s roller skates. Moving around the world feels intuitive, for the most part. Kalos’ capital city of Lumiose suffers from some difficult controls due to its behind the back perspective, and I often found myself wandering through alleys and shop doors that I had not meant to enter. Aside from the awkwardness of Lumiose, Pokémon X and Y have made the jump to 3D graphics quite masterfully.
For those of you looking to get into Pokémon’s more complicated meta-game, X and Y are by far the best places to start. The breeding and training cycle of old games has been accelerated through a number of new features. With the introduction of the Super Training system and the ability to breed good Pokémon more quickly, I actually found myself having fun with making my team, as opposed to accepting it as a necessary chore.
Pokémon X and Y are great games for getting into this series. The whole experience feels streamlined and fresh, giving players old and new plenty of reason to start out on their own journeys. There is no better time to play Pokémon, just make sure to put down the games long enough to attend classes.
(10/16/13 10:28pm)
I inch forward along the dungeon floor, my spear clutched tightly in my hands. Brilliantly colored foliage on either side of me, I occasionally pause to jot a note down on the crude map I have with me. I hear a rustling in the underbrush. There are monsters about. The rustling grows louder, I hear a growl, one of my companions screams. A sick guitar lick strikes up and I prepare for battle.
Etrian Odyssey: Untold: The Millennium Girl (EOU) for the 3DS is the latest in the long running and well regarded dungeon crawl series produced by Atlus. EOU is a remake of the original Etrian Odyssey, but adds a slew of new mechanics and story details to go along with its updated graphics and music. Known for being both difficult and time consuming, Etrian Odyssey games are not for those who find themselves strapped for time. At first glance, the gameplay seems like fairly traditional JRPG fare. Dungeons are traversed in a first person perspective, enemies are randomly encountered, and then your party and theirs take turns bashing each other over the head. In between forays into the dungeon you return to town to pick up quests at the local bar, sell the loot you’ve acquired and rest at a comfortable inn.
What sets Etrian Odyssey apart are a handful of unique mechanics combined with a difficulty level that requires some serious strategizing. When preparing for battle you will form a party of five characters. You can assign skills to these characters to allow them to play very different roles, and making sure that your party is properly equipped with both standard gear and Grimoire Stones is critical. An improperly prepared party will find themselves overwhelmed by the various brightly colored monsters that await them in the dungeons below. While questing through the dungeons you will be able to draw your own maps of them on a grid on the bottom screen. Filling out a complete map of a floor will allow you to navigate and complete quests more easily, which is absolutely critical as wandering around blindly is a good way to get yourself killed.
Unlike previous entries in the series, EOU allows you to choose between two modes of play. Classic Mode allows the player to create a full party of characters from the get go. The party can be customized by name, appearance, and character class, which allows the player to create some interesting class combinations. While these created characters can be fun, they won’t have as much of an influence on the game’s story, as they all act as pretty much silent protagonists. Story Mode follows the adventures of the Highlander as he explores the forest around the base of the World Tree, Yggdrasil. Joining him are four pre-created companions. This party is made up of fairly standard classes, but each of the characters possesses some unique skills and abilities that make building them up as a party significantly more interesting.
I found myself enjoying Story Mode much more than Classic. While I have enjoyed previous entries in the series, the addition of characters who actually talk and interact with the world on a narrative level is a welcome one indeed. The narrative is surprisingly strong for a game so focused on dungeon crawling and boss killing. Etrian Odyssey games have always had interesting fiction to go along with them, and seeing one of their stories with a party who can actually talk back to the characters they are interacting with is refreshing. If the Etrian Odyssey games ever felt like they were missing anything it was a cast of speaking characters, and these fit the bill nicely. They all fall into fairly standard anime or JRPG tropes, but with a bit of an Etrian Odyssey flair.
The feel of the Etrian Odyssey games might be what draws me to them the most. The art is brightly colored and sleek, combining the 2D character portraits nicely with well rendered 3D backgrounds and enemies. Because the combat takes place in first person, the enemy design has to shine to make combat appear dynamic and interesting. That, and the music is excellent. The aforementioned guitar licks that play during battle give way to smooth jazz saxophone when the party returns to the bar in town, and all the music is good enough to listen to on its own.
The Etrian Odyssey games have always been fabulous examples of the dungeon crawl genre. Tough but fair, beautiful to look at and to hear, EOU is no exception. The satisfaction of clearing a floor and slaying one of the game’s giant bosses makes the slow trek through the previous floors seem all the more worthwhile. Playing an Etrian Odyssey game can be hard work. You have to be able to juggle numerous statistics, strategies, and inventories, and the actual progression through the game can take quite a while if you are not fighting at peak efficiency. Being an adventurer is not an easy job, but it is an immensely satisfying one.
(10/02/13 11:28pm)
I knew Grand Theft Auto (GTA) V had hooked me when, minutes after putting the game down for the first time, I began referring to people as “homie.”
The game takes place in a fictionalized version of Los Angeles called Los Santos, and it is hard to imagine a more perfect setting. The reality of the game is a heightened one where criminality is the norm. Almost everyone you meet in GTA V is a criminal in some respect. The three protagonists of the game — Michael, Franklin and Trevor — are no exception to this rule. They kill, they lie, they steal and they do it not so much out of necessity, but out of anger.
Los Santos is a sick city, and I do not mean that in a complimentary way. It is a city that chewed up and spat out the American Dream. The world the player sees is corrupt and morally bankrupt. Whether it is the up and coming pop star who chases Franklin and his paparazzi friend through the streets in her car after she catches them spying on a backyard sex romp, or the marijuana enthusiast who spikes Michael’s joint with a bit of something else, everyone in Los Santos seems out to get the protagonists.
As a result, their villainous and arguably evil deeds become almost laudable. As I played through the game I found myself laughing at the awful things these characters did and that I did while controlling them. These characters kill and steal not because they need the money, but because the world around them is so insane that they can either try and fight it, or go along for the ride.
While GTA V excels in both story and theming, it struggles a bit more with its gameplay. The GTA series has always been known for controlling a little strangely. The previous entry in the series put many people off — myself included — with its awkward lock-on shooting and boring, heavy driving controls. GTA V does take steps to address those control issues. The shooting and movement feel a bit snappier, and the driving is more manic and satisfying. The controls are still weighty, however. I once climbed a ledge on a roof and found Michael taking another five steps straight off the edge due to his apparently massive inertia. And while driving around dodging cops is fun, the learning curve on the driving physics is a bit steep.
While the controls still retain some of their old clunk, they do manage to work as intended. Rockstar’s games are much more like world engines, and the characters really do feel like they are placed in the world. Walking around Los Santos feels like walking around a city, and the fact that you can so easily spin out and get overwhelmed by cops makes the car chases all the more exciting.
As the game progresses you will eventually be able to switch between all three protagonists on the fly, dropping into their lives in progress. You might switch over to Franklin to find him picking up his prescription from the green clinic, or swap to Trevor to find him waking up in a gas station covered in blood and wearing a dress (as was said in one of the game’s trailers, the less that is said about Trevor, the better). This character swapping gives the world an organic, dynamic feel and makes the characters seem like they have their own lives going on outside of your control. The character swapping is also used during the game’s heist missions. These are multi-step affairs where each character will have a role to play. Sometimes you will switch control to a different character at set moments, and other times you will be able to switch between characters on the fly as they fight their way out of a tricky spot. These scenes were some of my favorite in the game, and pulling off a successful heist always left me feeling satisfied.
Visually and orally, GTA V excels. I could go into greater detail about how the game is bright and colorful while still maintaining a realistic aesthetic, or how the radio stations are tailored wonderfully to each character, but it’s a Rockstar game: it was always going to look and sound great. GTA V is a game about terrible people doing terrible things to a terrible world. It is not a happy game, but it made me laugh. The characters are despicable, but I cared about their lives, and wanted them to win. It plops the player down in a world that might make them sick, presents them three characters who are as disgusted by it as the player is, and then hands them guns, lots of guns. GTA V is a violent game, and it uses that violence to great effect to tell its sordid tale. It is a game that can get the player thinking, even while allowing them a rip roaring good time tearing apart Los Santos. If you like open world games, gangsters, cars, or thinking about how America has failed you, look no further than GTA V.
(09/12/13 12:41am)
One button dives, the other kicks. There, now you know everything you need to know to play Divekick. Created by Iron Galaxy, a studio comprised largely of fighting game enthusiasts and players, Divekick is a (literal) two button fighting game that began as a joke and transformed into much, much more. The goal is to kick your opponent before they can kick you. Each character has around 2,000 health, and the kicks each do 1 billion damage. To kick your opponent successfully you will need to maneuver your character above them by diving straight into the air with the dive button. To back away from an opponent, kick the ground so hard that the Earth rotates underneath you, giving the appearance of backing up.
This simple setup masks an incredibly complex game. While Divekick is easy to pick up (though I did have one or two friends who had trouble remembering which button did what), it is fairly difficult to master. The game came out August 20 had time to play with a couple of groups of friends. Each group understood the game quickly, but as I played more and more, I found myself consistently beating people who had just picked it up. The result is a game that works well for both parties and competitive play. If you have a group of friends who are into Super Smash Brothers and games of that ilk, you should definitely check it out.
While I can wholeheartedly recommend Divekick’s gameplay, I feel that its humor might need some explaining. I mentioned earlier that the game began as a joke, specifically a grand joke about the fighting game community, and fighting games in general. As the project got larger and larger it continued to add more jabs at fighting games and competitive video game play. This means that a lot of the humor can come across as either hard to understand, or somewhat crass and occasionally racist. The important thing to remember is the Divekick, as fun as it may be, is also a satire. When it includes a character named Kung Pao who jumps around making Bruce Lee-esque chirps and squeaks, Divekick is commenting on the racism so prevalent in fighting games, not continuing it. Plenty of the humor is hard to understand as well. Some characters are references to real people, and the only reason I know that is because I followed developer footage of the game as it was made. Divekick is still a funny game, however. I found my friends and I laughing at least once per match, if not more. The characters all bring a lot of ridiculous personalities to the field, like Kick, who speaks entirely in bastardized Will Smith quotes.
Along with the classic fighting game Versus Mode, Divekick also contains an arcade style Story Mode. In this mode, the player will select a character, see a short comic strip explaining their entry into the Divekicking circuit, and then proceed to fight through the rest of the roster. These fights are occasionally peppered with more story content, but are largely bland and kind of frustrating. Creating good fighting game AI is always difficult, and the enemies either feel like complete pushovers or unbeatable champions. The Story Mode is good for a few laughs, and it is definitely worth seeing all of the characters’ intros. Versus Mode is the true draw of the game though.
Unfortunately for many college students, Divekick is only available for Sony consoles and the PC. While 360 users are out of luck, anyone with a solid computer, a Playstation 3, or a Vita can download the game for the easy price of $9.99. If you are playing the PC version. All the versions except the Vita version can also be played online, but it really is a lot more fun with some friends in the room.
Divekick gives people who are not knowledgeable about fighting games the chance to experience that kind of competitive flow without having to learn a ridiculous amount of combos. Combine that pick-up-and-play ease with solid humor and a pretty cool soundtrack, and you have yourselves one heck of a game.
(03/14/13 4:00am)
I appreciate what you are trying to do, Lynn Coady. Making your protagonist a large, scary-looking, yet sympathetic man was bold. Rank could easily have come across as whining about winning the genetic lottery, but instead he presents a frank account of what life is like for a peaceful man to be stuck in a bruiser’s body. Rank’s development over the course of the novel, and his hilarious and flowing voice kept me reading page after page. See, I appreciate all of that, Ms. Coady, but I had trouble with just one small fact: I am a little man, and it just seemed unfair for Rank to complain about being a big one.
For those not in on the terrible joke I just made above, Lynn Coady’s The Antagonist is presented in the form of a series of angry emails to an author. Before the story begins, the protagonist, Rank, finds a novel written by his old friend Adam. When Rank cracks open the book, he is shocked to find a brutal and dishonest portrayal of himself. Angry at his old friend’s betrayal, Rank begins writing emails to Adam, detailing the parts of his life that Adam misrepresented. While Rank’s account begins as an enraged rant, it soon settles down and transforms into something more nuanced. As the pages turn, Rank begins to weave a mysterious, disjointed narrative of a violent, thoughtful, and tragically funny life.
Believe me, the pages will turn. I often found myself stumbling to class or meetings in the mornings, bleary eyed and confused after another late night spent with Rank and his thoughts. The Antagonist is nothing if not funny, and that — paired with its intriguing plot — was enough to keep me chugging through it. As for length, it runs about 300 pages, so it should not take too much time from those of us with busy schedules.
Practicalities aside, though, The Antagonist presents a surprisingly deep narrative. Or at least it was surprising to me. This was a book I picked up in a random shop because I thought its cover looked cool (totally judge books by their covers by the way, it has only ever worked out for me). After reading the first chapter, I thought I would be in for a funny jaunt through an angry man’s thoughts. What I did not expect was how attached I would get to Rank, and how he would change how I looked at people. One of the central conceits of the novel is that Rank is always assumed to be something of a brute due to his size and strength. The police don’t trust him, his friends are kind of scared of him and his tiny father uses him as a means of being vicariously huge.
As I mentioned before, I am a little man, and it was hard for me to imagine Rank as a big one at first. He came across as too humble, too thoughtful and too measured to be a big guy in the novel. The big guy is supposed to be there to hit stuff. If he is smart, he is supposed to be smart about manly stuff, and espouse on the virtues of courage and manly restraint. That’s how life works, right? Well I was a good couple of chapters in before I started to notice how much of a jerk I was being. Really, I was no better than Rank’s dad and if you read this book you will know how bad that realization must have felt. Rank morphed in my head at that moment. He went from the reasonably tall and well-muscled guy I had been imagining, to a giant amongst men. Suddenly, I understood the fear that people had for Rank, and I also learned to respect him. The theme of the novel began to click into place, and I felt my head cogs begin to turn in excitement. Suddenly, The Antagonist was not just about how the world views people larger than them, it was about how I viewed people larger than me.
I can’t guarantee you will have the same experience with The Antagonist as I did, but I can guarantee that you will have a good time reading it. Coady has crafted an excellent story here, one that could easily mean a lot of things for a lot of people. There are certainly more themes at play than the big guy being a nice guy, and I would hate for anyone to miss out on it. After all, how much reading could you already have to do?