May 16, 2012

I Heard, Many Many Times, How Common Breaks Are In Women’s Matches.

That EA Grand Slam Tennis 2 sure is a tennis game, huh guys?

I mean, I like me some Tennis Games, to be sure. When I played Virtua Tennis 4, I was blown away (IGN.com) by how much fun I had. So I heard this was coming out with some sort of crazy stick controls, and people seem to think EA can make a sports game once and awhile, so I thought I’d give it a try.

Can I just say I hate the EA Sports way of doing things? I have not booted up an EA Sports game that I did not feel had a terrible menu and was completely uninviting. Grand Slam Tennis 2 is the first of these games on 360: you’d think they’d put more time into that shit. Then again, I guess they’re just expecting everyone to have played some other EA sports game at some point. I don’t know. Anyway, all the menus and shit are really not intuitive, and it will often throw like three screens of shit at you when it should really put all that info on one screen.

Once you get into the game, though, it’s fine, if not amazing, game of tennis. The “total racquet” control using the right stick is fine. It takes some getting used to, but it’s not a big deal. It also did feel kind of unique and got me into the game a little more. I never had anywhere near the control I have in a Virtua Tennis or Mario Tennis, though. I feel like I know those games well enough to always put the ball right where I wanted. I never quite got the hang of how to mix up my shots in this game. The game does offer button controls as well, but why am I not just playing Virtua Tennis at that point?

The campaign or whatever you call it tries to mix itself up by giving you little achievements during each match. It’ll be like “try to have a winner after a dive!” or something dumb like that. It also suggests you boost the number of sets you play per match in order to unlock more achievements. This is fucking insane. Anyone who has ever played a tennis game knows you do not want to play a virtual tournament where it takes more than one set to finish off a random player. It takes FOREVER otherwise. Save that stuff for the dramatic finals or something. Anyway, since these achievements did not always fit with my play style, I found them pretty dumb. I’m a rush the net power player, you know? I’m just not going to do some of those things, even on defense.

The commentary, too, was nice, but really repetitive. The first few games you play, it feels way, way better than normal commentary in a game like this. Very natural, and so on. McEnroe rambles on about strategy relating to what’s happening, and it feels super awesome. It’s like you really are playing a tennis game on TV! Except, again, when you lean heavily on one strategy like I like to do, there’s only so many things he has to say about power players who tend to rush the net. And once those are exhausted, which will happen before the end of your first tournament, I guarantee it, it’s not nearly as magical anymore.

If you want a Tennis game, buy Virtua Tennis 4. I bet it’s super cheap now, and that game rocks. I mean, I suppose EA Grand Slam Tennis 2 is a good first effort from EA. It’s certainly competent. But it lacks variety, and what it tries to do well, like the different controls and the commentary, just don’t hold up over long play sessions. It’s a shame, but it’s a good start, certainly.

May 14, 2012

A Super Monday Night Blog Post.

I’ve been playing a lot of Super Monday Night Combat recently. Because, you know. Combat. Anyway, I’m having a lot of fun.

I don’t claim to know what the fuck I’m doing, perse, but it really is a lot of fun. I mean, I enjoyed the way the first MNC was kind of TF2 mixed with DotA. This is more straight up DotA MOBA Lords Management, but it’s got tons of style still. It’s very shooter-y, but most of the real “shooter” classes are the more hardcore ones, and you can be very useful by being less of a crack shot in these things. That’s what makes it so appealing.

I just feel like a lot of the basic DotA things are very simplified in a very accessible way in this game. At least, way more accessible than your DotA 2s or what have you. It even has things like Rune Pages from LoL, but it’s a bit more streamlined, and the game will set you up with “standard” sets most of the time, if you don’t mess with them. Of course, you need to in order to be effective, but, you know.

I love the Combat Girl. She’s like super support healer, which is great. Unlike the Support, she can heal 3 people at once, at a reduced rate. This is, most of the time, preferable for me. Her turrets are weaker and have shorter ranges, but you can throw out a lot of them. And her laser beam… man, that beam is great. That beam lets you snipe people and get kills as a fucking healer. Combat Girl is aces.

The other pros… I just haven’t gotten the hang of yet. I am not completely garbage at using the Assault? But I just don’t know. I don’t know who else is going to fit my play style. I suppose I’ll just have to keep playing and see.

But yeah, it’s a brutal game, but it’s silly and fun. I’m going to keep at it for awhile, I think. At least a little while.

May 12, 2012

Knee Deep In This (Lack Of) Puzzle Shit: A New Day

Yeah, I walked with the dead, what of it? Spoilers, clearly.

Here’s what I knew about The Walking Dead before I played this game: it has the slow kind of zombies. The main character is a sheriff or something who was in a coma. They go live in a prison at some point. The TV show is different from the comic. It’s in Georgia. That’s it, really.

But, you know, I played it anyway, because everyone was raving about it and it was made by Famous and Video Games. So, you know.

Anyway, I really enjoyed it. It’s just always awesome to see a game be based pretty well completely around talking to people and conversing that makes everything feel so tense and important. When you’re just talking about people’s lives, the game makes that seem important. You feel like you’re bonding with people who you might have to rely on to save your ass later. When people start shouting, it’s way more scary than when the zombies are after you. It’s pretty great!

The way they put the action in there, kind of out of nowhere, does set you on edge though, in an awesome way. You very often are going OH SHIT OH SHIT! and you have to make aiming and stuff happen quickly. There was a “combat” scenario in the game I straight-up failed, and the game continued. The person I didn’t save was saved by someone else, and they’ll remember I fucking suck and can’t protect them. That is so fantastic.

It was a really compelling experience, and while I’m watching CJ play through it, and he’s making different choices, and it’s easy to see how they wrap some choices around to make the basic story work either way, now that I’m seeing it again, it does feel like I had a big impact. I love the percentages at the end. Apparently I made the unpopular choice in several situations, which is interesting to me. CJ and I have yet to make the same choice, too, which is also interesting. Indeed.

Anyway, there is one part that is bullshit. THAT FUCKING BRICK. There are so many way more sensible ways of getting that brick than the way you get it in the game. SO MANY. I WAS SO FUCKING MAD AT THAT BRICK. I wasted a ton of time trying to figure out what I was missing, and why I couldn’t pick it up, but it turns out there was no reason at all: you just can’t get it at that point, even though it’s right there and you know where tools are to get you to it. It’s absurd. Fucking brick.

I’m glad I spent my 5 bucks (to play it on 360 just to piss my two PC gamer boyfriends off. Also because I wanted to play it on 360) on the first episode and I will gladly buy the rest. It’s shaping up to be a good story! I hope it can keep it all up.

May 8, 2012

It’s Right In The Title. Of Course I Tried It.

I was on the app store, and there was an app called “Rocket Fox” and because I am literally the most predictable person, I downloaded it. Well, the free trial anyway. But I’m thinking about going ahead and ponying up for the full thing, because it was a fun time.

Basically, you are a fox (Yay!) who is tasked with bouncing around between these “rocket flowers,” that shoot off fireworks. You have to clear all the flowers in a stage by falling into one, riding the rocket up, and then gliding to fall into the next one. Every time you fire off a rocket, swirling foxfire springs up around you, which you can collect to unlock shit like silly hats and new firework colors. It’s pretty simple, but it’s easy to pick up and has a decent difficulty to it where you rarely feel like the game is fucking you over when you die: it’s always your fault.

This game is one of the best uses of accelerometer controls I have seen. The game is played in a top-down view, and basically you just tip the screen about to lean the fox around while he’s gliding in the air. This works way better than I anticipated: You kind of want to do that anyway, and they have it calibrated like… perfectly, even on the gyroscope-less iPad 1 I am using to play. It would probably be even better on a phone, where you could lean it easier.

I found the unlocks pretty rewarding. They’re just cosmetic, but getting new burst patterns to add to the random rotation, and new colors of fireworks feels pretty good. Eventually I’ll probably get all of them, though, and the little outfits didn’t seem very cool. I kind of liked how the fox looks without accessories. He looks much cooler. Oh well.

Anyway, give this game a try. It has a very nice demo, and it’s fun. It also has a fox. So, you know.

May 7, 2012

Competitiveness.

CJ and I played Dungeon Twister. It had been awhile since I played, but I swept him pretty completely. It’s… an interesting game.

Being a game of basically complete information, where you know everything your opponent could do at any time, really, it’s so very, very unfriendly to new players. I obviously had figured out the game more than CJ had in his like one play of it, and it was really easy to sweep in and sneak through the gaps in his defense, because I knew what to look for and what I could do. I mean, I’m sure there are plenty of people more skilled that could beat me, but even with that slight experience gap, it was really no contest.

How do you overcome that? I mean, it’s the same sorts of problems you have in games like, say, a DotA, where you jump in to try to figure out the complicated rules and just get utterly destroyed. Or a Street Fighter or other fighting game, where you need to learn many characters patterns to be successful, but are often given nowhere to start, really. Or even something like Team Fortress 2 or some other very team-based shooter, where you need to build up a skillset in order to even be vaguely useful to your team. It’s such an amazing problem. It’s something that keeps people who could enjoy a strong, interesting multiplayer environment away.

When even a little bit of knowledge can basically knock you out of the “fun” bracket for playing with your friends, that shit is tough. I mean, I always play to win. I feel it would be an insult not to play any game I am playing to the best of my ability. But when I’m just crushing people, why would who I am destroying keep playing? And why would I want to play? I don’t really get much joy out of winning most of the time. It’s the game that’s fun. If my opponent is not having a good time, I don’t really want to be involved.

At the same time, something completely random and stupid like Mario Party is absolutely no fun, because you really have 0 control over what happens, and victories are completely and utterly empty. There’s nothing to really find there.

It’s a tough line to walk, I guess… I don’t know. TF2’s Coach program is a good idea in that direction, but also just doesn’t seem like it would work. I’d love to be coached by a friend (the little bit of time where Morbid Coffee coached me in Super Street Fighter IV was pretty awesome, and though I’m not GOOD, perse, I learned a lot about how to play Abel, even in that little session), but even among nice people volunteering for that job, I just wouldn’t be comfortable with that. A strong tutorial can help, but that sort of thing just can’t really teach a metagame. It’s hard to learn that stuff via anything but constant loss, and that’s the problem.

I don’t know. I’d like to feel like I can pull these sorts of games out, especially when I think they’re pretty neat like Dungeon Twister. But I am unsure how to do that, really.

I guess that’s what I’m trying to say.

May 5, 2012

It’s Okay, Darkness. I Get It. Don’t Have To Keep Screaming And Making The Screen Red.

On the Bombcast recently, they had this argument over whether Prototype 2 was Dumb, or dumb. Like, is it dumb as in stupid and silly and fun? Or is it Dumb as in completely stupid bullshit that’s painful to play.

Anyway, The Darkness 2 is dumb in the fun silly way, and I really enjoyed it.

I mean, the combat is pretty silly stuff? You shoot a dude. If you run up to them, you can slash them with your evil back snake, or grab them with the other evil back snake and then tear out their guts and get healed or whatever. It’s breezy and silly and pointlessly gorey and a lot of fun. It does get annoying near the end, where you’ve got dudes with big flashlights and guys with these stupid laser whip things that steal your weapon in the mix, but it never gets so annoying that I wanted to even dream of stopping.

It was kind of clever in a lot of ways too. Those eat a dude kill moves varied up by what button you pressed. Each one got you a different benefit. You could get health, or extra ammo, or recharge your evil powers. It made no sense, really, but it was pretty fun because it gave you more of a reason to want to rush in and do them all the time. “I could really use another blast of swarm for that shield dude, so I’ll run in and eat this guy for recharge power… and now my really good gun is out of ammo, so I’ll eat the shield guy I just stunned with swarm for ammo…” It made a nice flow to the combat.

Anyway, the story was pretty stupid. Very grimdark in a pretty silly way. It had this mob story too, that it was trying SO HARD to make “a thing” but it was really just this huge bunch of crazy stereotypes… and it was trying to convince me that maybe the whole game was a delusion as well, which was just silly. But it was, for the most part, an entertaining silly. I didn’t even listen to a podcast while I played it. It kept my attention. That says something, certainly.

The best parts, though, were the collectables. Hearing the crazy man, Johnny, describe the history of the collectibles in this game was just fantastic. It was, hands down, the best writing and acting the game has to offer. Very, very funny, and oddly relevant to the game as a whole. It almost made me want to go back and get all the collectables! But, not really. I mean, I hadn’t played a console game in forever because I’ve been so busy. I’m not that sort of player. But it made me search a lot harder for them while playing, to be sure.

This was a fantastic rental and a fantastic like 7-8 hour romp. I really enjoyed myself. What I played of the first Darkness felt stupidly complicated and I didn’t want to fuck with it. This was simple, but it did what it was trying to do well. I had fun. Give it a try if you want a light, fun shooter, for sure.

May 4, 2012

Yet Another “Fine” “Addition” To The With Friends Family

I’ve been playing Scramble with Friends with my brother.

I’m really just kind of fucking annoyed that Zynga has the market cornered on these good asynchronous games, mostly. They work without any problems, and they play across platform so I can play on my iPad with my brother on his Android phone. I am not a huge fan of Zynga the company! Most of what they’ve done with these games has been pretty sleazy! And yet, I play their games like… all the time. Most days I will play turns in Draw Something, Words with Friends, and now this. Ugh.

Anyway, Scramble with Friends is way better than Hanging with Friends, which just never caught on with me. Maybe it is because Boggle is just a more interesting game than Hangman. It’s model to get more money is also incredibly lacking in annoyance, so that’s nice.

You play a series of 3 back and forth rounds of Boggle with a friend. The second round adds “double letter” tiles, and the third adds “triple letter” tiles. The person with the most points at the end of all three rounds wins. Each time you want to play a round, it costs you a coin. Coins regenerate over time (faster in my version I paid a buck for, apparently) so they are mostly just a mechanism to keep you from playing 5000 games of Scramble with Friends at once. Unless you want to buy coins, of course. Before you start the round, you get to pick powerups. You can take one for free, but to take a second, it costs you another coin. There is basically no reason not to do this, especially if you are only playing against one or two opponents once a day. I have never fallen below like 17 coins (I think it maxes at 19 or 20) playing this thing, and I play whenever I want with two powerups.

There are three powerups. Scramble, ironically, is completely useless. It doesn’t actually scramble the board. It just rotates it in another direction. The words you can make don’t change. They took what could have been the most useful power, and made it completely useless. Freeze just stops the timer and gives you more time, which is good if you’re a good Boggler. Inspiration will let you just reveal a word you haven’t spelled on the board three times. This is where the money is. Most of the time, it’ll show you a word that you can also make plural, doubling your points. Since you can take two Inspirations, that’s six words, and that’s a huge point boost, as most of the time (not always) it’s showing you the big words, because you’ve already caught all the little ones. I always bring two Inspirations. It would just be stupid not to.

Anyway, I dunno, it’s boggle. It’s fun. There is nothing wrong with it, and again, the “get money” model does not hit or annoy casual players AT ALL, which is nice. Play it, I guess? Or don’t and continue to take a stand against Zynga. I can’t blame you for that one.

April 30, 2012

Final Skylanders 3DS Thoughts.

Look, fine, let’s finish up my Skylanders 3DS talk, okay? Let’s finish it.

I talked about general mechanics with the Portal of Power here, but I’m going to talk about things overall real quick.

Time limits suck.

I mean, I’m just going to say it: having these time limits on you to rush through levels where you are encouraged to collect all the little doodads about the level is pretty stupid! It really frustrates me, because the game is more FUN if I try to complete the special objectives, because it is not challenging. But if I do that, then I run out of this arbitrary time limit. My only option becomes to just run through the level, but that can be very boring. It’s just running forward and jumping very quickly without the combat challenges and searching for the hidden items and paths in the levels. It’s not that hard to do. It’s just less fun. But if you try to do most of the special objectives in one run, you can easily run out of time on the later levels, and you have to start all the way over. It’s annoying.

It also kind of bothers me how the game discourages having a huge fucking collection of Skylanders like I have. If you use a variety of Skylanders, they will NOT be leveled enough to take on later challenges without grinding, pure and simple. I mean, I understand that I am insane for owning like ALL SKYLANDERS but the 360 game gives you bonuses and XP boosts to help ALL your Skylanders be always viable, which is just smart. It lets you level at the perfect speed for the game no matter how many stupid figures you buy. The 3DS version offers nothing like that. You’re kind of penalized for not sticking with mostly two different Skylanders, though at the same time, if you only stick with two, you won’t be able to complete the elemental challenges. Basically, I had one Skylander of each element, at level one, for my play through the game, and I used what guys I had to in order to complete the challenges, and my guys were SO UNDER-LEVELED. Annoying.

Anyway, complaints. But the game itself is fun enough. It’s a solid action-platformer, and as I think I’ve said, many Skylanders who are kind of garbage in the 360 version are really way more relevant in the 3DS version, since they can jump to dodge enemy attacks. It’s fun! I recommend it if you, like me, wanted more Skylanders after the 360 game, and wanted to play with those toys some more. I would not recommend it as your first Skylanders experience. The lack of skill trees and equipment in the 3DS version just makes it so much less engaging. Play the “full” version first, if you’re just going to play one.

April 22, 2012

I Will Blast Your Rumble All The Way To The Rumble Blast.

I also played some Pokemon Rumble Blast because, you know, I played some Pokemon Rumble Blast.

I mean, I really like Pokemon Rumble. It was simple, and silly, but running through dungeons with friends was a lot of fun, and it was adorable. I guess that’s all I really need! I thought it was really worth my Wiiware bucks. I figured that expanding it into a full game would be a fine idea, one that would result in a game I wanted to play.

But it really didn’t.

For one, and this is more a me problem, it’s focused on the Black and White Pokemon. I guess I’m just getting old, but seriously, I do not give a crap about the new Pokemon at all. Maybe they’re cool. I dunno! I can’t focus on Pokemon games proper anymore to really figure it out. Maybe if they put out another Pokemon Mystery Dungeon with the new guys I’ll see them. But really, that was kind of a turnoff, having to play with them, I’ll be honest. I wanted to roll with my favorites, as per always. That’s why I love Pokemon! You can pick and choose the ones you love and stubbornly use them even when other options might be better! It’s sweet! But yeah, who knows how far I would have had to get to get to the Pokemon I really enjoy.

Secondly, the gameplay was exactly the same. Like exactly the same! It’s really simple button mashing dungeon crawling. There’s really nothing to it. While that’s fine, I suppose, I found that I only really found that entertaining in a group format. With a friend, swapping Pokemon and slaughtering other Pokemon is kind of fun, because you’re talking, you’re interacting with another person, and you’re trying out the really shitty Pokemon just for the hell of it because your friend can pick up the slack. When you’re alone, you’re stuck with the clearly best Pokemon, so there’s little experimentation, and all encounters are basically exactly the same. It’s really unfortunate. Maybe if I had a friend with another 3DS and the game, it would be fun? But that’s a really annoying setup, when I could just play Pokemon Rumble on my Wii with minimal effort.

Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe there will be 3DS games I want at some point? I want to play RE: Revelations and The Mercenaries, but I can wait until The Mercenaries is dirt cheap and for when Gamefly sends me Revelations. But yeah, so far, not too engaged with these 3DS games… well, besides Skylanders, because it’s fucking SKYLANDERS.

April 21, 2012

Here Are The Watership Down Mafia Rules You Didn’t Request

Note before I even get started: If this becomes a game I will actually run, I will reread Watership Down and Tales from Watership Down before I go about writing any of the flavor text. I am doing this off memories of books I read a long time ago at this point. I am not sure if I am going to have the tone write in this prospective write-up. I only mention this because that sort of thing REALLY matters to me as a writer. So. If the tone’s not right, this was mostly to get a basic gameplan of the plot and mechanics down. Okay? Okay.

And now, the pitch.

Like so many things, trouble crept up slowly. The scent on the wind seemed insignificant until it was too late. In retrospect, the signs were there, and I simply could not see them. The Cult of InlĂ© built its numbers slowly, and seemed normal enough at first. Even the coup that brought Hraknilrah into powered seemed fair enough: it had felt like a change could be useful. But it soon became clear things weren’t that simple. Hrkanilrah used his oswala to push rabbits left and right into joining the cult. Soon, those who did not give in began to disappear, and those remaining were told “it was their time.” We does were skittish and frightened. Many joined, worried for their kits if they did otherwise.
I did not stand by.
I talked to the bucks and does who were trying to resist. I spoke of the need to leave: the need to escape this predicament. Many did not want to go. Many did not want to live as hlessil, wandering aimlessly without a warren to call home. But as more and more disappeared, they knew they had no choice, and they joined me, one by one.
We made a plan. We knew when the time was right. We knew who of the oswala was the weakest, and who we could overpower. Everything was set. We would finally be safe.
But you… I trusted you. I thought you were on my side. But you told Hrkanilrah. He prepared. But he couldn’t stop us all. Even now, they’re running, far from here, to safety. I wish I could be there to help them, instead of under your foot, with your claws in my chest and your teeth at my neck. I’m sure Hrkanilrah had a backup plan. I’m sure not all of the group that got away has pure intentions. I had thought about this. Planned for it. And now those plans are useless, and they are on their own.
But I am not afraid to die. I will stare down the Black Rabbit and laugh. Despite all you and your cult have done, they will survive and live on. You betrayal will, in the end, amount to nothing. I know it.

Watership Mafia

The town are the Refugees of the lair of the cult, attempting to establish a new life from themselves away from the dangers the cult represents. However, hidden amongst their group are cultists, our Mafia faction, sent along with the refugees in order to take them out, as nobody is allowed to quit, and nobody is allowed to disagree. The Refugees may vote to banish one rabbit from their group each day, sending them out into the harsh wilderness they find themselves in with little chance for survival. The Cultists get a night kill and night chat as per usual, and of course, can vote to banish just like any other rabbit.

There are hrair refugees and hrair cultists in the game.

Days are the normal 72 hours, and Nights are the normal 48. Let’s please follow normal Mafia procedure and not be silly, doing things like talking about the game outside of the game and so on. No posting of text verbatim from your role PM, or other such material sent to you in secret.

The Seer
Among the refugees is a Seer, a rabbit blessed with strange visions that give him or her a glimpse at the future. They’ve kept this power a secret for their whole lives, since they have not forseen anything too disastrous and they’re unlikely to be believed by their fellow rabbits, but in the current situation everyone finds themselves in, their power is much more relevant.
At the 48 hour mark of every day, the Seer will get a vision. They will see the end of the game day, and they will learn the affiliation of the player who currently has the most votes on him or her because they can see the results of the lynch before it happens. (If there is a tie, which player the Seer will see the future of will be determined by random die roll.)
The Town will be informed when The Seer dies.

The Storytellers
The Lapine race is famous for their stories, and even in these dire times, the desire to tell stories to teach and inspire cannot be quelled.
There are two storytellers: a cultist and a refugee, chosen at random from among their ranks. During the day, before the 48 hour mark, each storyteller will message the GM in secret with a general plot for a story and a short moral of this story of 10 words or less. The plot can be as complicated or simple as the storyteller wants, and the moral can say anything the storyteller would like, even if it seems to have nothing to do with the plot. The GM will then take the given plot and moral and fashion an in-universe story to be told following that plot. When the day reaches the 48 hour mark, both stories will be told to the town, with the verbatim morals attached at the end. The order they are posted each day will be random, and no indication of which storyteller is which will be given in the flavor text.
When a storyteller dies, the town will not be informed. A random member of the team the storyteller was from will become the new storyteller for that team. The Seer will never be a storyteller.