Skills for Kills - Crackdown 2 Review

The original Crackdown was a bit of a sleeper hit. Deftly combining a Grand Theft Auto esque sense of freedom and scale with an empowering, stat building mechanic that mimed the addictive, collect-a-thon nature of Rare's best titles, it seemingly came out of nowhere, gave players an sandbox, and told them to run around and have as much fun as possible, either alone or with a friend. The fact that the game came packaged with the Halo 3 Beta was also a boon, as it meant that many gamers who wouldn't have played it otherwise were exposed to it's unique blend of platforming, shooting, and open world mayhem, and it's a design that games like inFamous play off of to this very day. The aformentioned co-op was also unheard of at the time, and it ensured that the game would have a dedicated following, many of which were clamoring for a sequel.

Three years later, we've gotten our answer. Crackdown 2 is among us, boasting a new developer, new aesthetic, and all around more content. A new 4 player co-op, more weapons, more enemies, just MORE all around. It's risky after three years to go the route of refine rather than redefine, and while I'm not one to mess with an already winning formula, does it work a second time around?

In short, YES. Crackdown 2 may not be radically different from its predecessor, but its list of upgrades and expansions do well to augment what was already a great game.

Read the rest of the review on CLgamer.com!


Continue Reading..

Black, White, and Grey - inFamous Review

I think I'm qualified to say a few words on inFamous now...



What say you? Let's get on it.

Reading one of my earlier posts, I can see how it'd be difficult to even get mildly excited about inFamous. Given the general "meh" reaction to an open world game that isn't Grand Theft Auto, without any of the buzz of such a title, it's very easy to write inFamous off as another clone, or worse off, as just "another open world hero game". It's even easier considering every other game releasing in June boasting nearly the same thing. It couldn't be further from the truth however, as inFamous is not only one of the best superhero games I've played, but one of the better open world games I've played as well.

The story of inFamous is centered around one Cole McGrath, a very average delivery man in the fictional Empire City delivering just another package on another average day...or so he thought. Turns out Cole delivered a bomb that explodes moments after he reaches his destination and not only levels nearly the entire city, killing thousands in it's wake, but also imbues him with electricity based powers. Unfortunately, the rest of the city wasn't as lucky as Cole. The fallout of the explosion started a plague that forced the government to quarantine (abandon) the city and the gangs who were previously low key have risen up and taken full advantage of the newly anarchic society. Cole himself has many questions, including the nature of the blast and why he seems to be the only one with powers, but with the entire city in disarray and steadily getting worse as time passes, will Cole use his newly acquired abilities to be Empire City's savior, or its ruler?



It's a setup that works very well, due particularly to inFamous' presentation. From the very second you press start, the game seamlessly throws you headfirst into the explosion that rocks Empire City, and into Cole's battered confusion at the event. It's sewn up in such a way that you begin the story on the same note he does, and does a great job of putting you in the character's shoes that few games bother to do. Many of the game's cinematics are either handled real time in this fashion, or through stylized comic book cutscenes like the picture above. Visually, the game does a above average job of rendering the city with an almost meticulous attention to detail (nearly every building is unique and every district has a personality of its own), though it does suffer from an uneven framerate at times and noticeable pop in of objects.

Controlling Cole is a blast as well, using what I'm going to pretentiously call "magnetic parkour", he has the uncanny ability to scale anything that looks like a handhold, or stand on any surface he can plant his feet on, provided it isn't TOO narrow for his feet. Occasionally, the system hiccups and he'll grab the wrong ledge, and descending can be annoying due to his tendency to grab EVERYTHING automatically. However the undeniable rush that you'll feel leaping from ledge to ledge, rooftop to rooftop with ease outweighs this, especially during the game's missions that test your platforming skills. It also plays fantastically into battles, having the ability to leap from a building, throwing out a ball of lightning before grabbing a streetlight mid descent, hanging and firing out a few shocks to disperse the crowd and leaping into the lot of them with a carefully timed thunder drop is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to your prowess.

Controlling his various powers is also a fairly intuitive experience. While you start out with a very basic electric attack (activated by pressing R1), you eventually gain access to abilities that involve you throwing shockwaves, firing balls of energy from your fists, and even calling thunder down from the sky (steered by the sixaxis!). While the majority of your powers are admittedly 3rd person shooter archtypes (pistol, sniper, rocket launcher), seeing them cleverly disguised as lightning powers with their own unique properties adds to their appeal. It's also very well laid out across the pad, and you'll rarely find yourself executing a move you didn't want to.



Speaking of his powers, depending on the path you decide to go down, his powers change, and it actually affects the experience. While the basics of each ability don't change, their effects do, lending a more noble player with defensive abilities, and the more malevolent of us with destructively offensive ones. It's a system that actually plays into the role you're fufilling; as a hero, you'll balance the fallout of your attacks between effectively subduing the criminials and not harming the populace in the crossfire, as a villain, you won't care and will relish watching everything explode in a shower of electric sparks and debris.

To put it simply, being good turns the game into Crackdown, being evil is akin to playing Grand Theft Auto as a teenager, invoking mass destruction and terror for the thrill and fun of it.



There's a karma system in place governing all this, that through your actions towards the citizens and enemies (Kill or restrain? Heal or harm?) decides which direction you take. While most of the choices are very black and white, some a little too obvious, there are later ones that really test your mettle and truly place you at the reins of Cole's character. He may be somewhat of an antihero, but he's only as good a person as you are willing to be, and the entire feel of the game changes in kind. As you progress through the wealth of story and side missions the game offers, your reputation changes, and people will either fear you, revere you, throw rocks when they see you or try their best to do their part in saving the city alongside you. It's almost worth seeing the game through twice, just to see the dynamics of the city shift due to your actions.



But of course, with all the praise, there has to be a major complaint here and there, so I'll fire off a few before we close. The presentation is solid, as I mentioned before, with Empire City having more high resolution textures than any open world deserves to have, but the engine is clearly choking on this fact, and while it does a bangup job of keeping things solid even in the most explosive of battles, simply traversing the city drives the engine insane with processing and the framerate drops. Take into account almost insulting pop in at times (I've literally seen an entire quadrant of a building disappear and reappear with a single step back and forth)and it's a problem that's frequently distracting.

Also, I understand the balance a superhero game needs to strike between power and vulnerability, but the enemies presented, down to the lowliest grunt, are very effective with their weapons, almost to a fault. They're highly perceptive, able to spot you from blocks away, and deadly accurate. While I didn't expect them all to be unorganized bumbling idiots, I certainly didn't expect them to be Navy SEALs and expert marksmen either. It really feels like a knock to my heroism when I fear being picked off from a mile away by stray gunfire while scaling a building. Finally, the game has an excellent soundtrack, but you'd never know it because you rarely get a chance to hear it. Most of your time exploring the city will be done to the sounds of street ambiance, and it's a bit of a waste for such great tracks to gain minimal exposure during boss battles and the occasional story event.

None of this though, keeps inFamous from being a game I highly recommend to anyone owning a PS3. The story is interesting and well paced, the main character is a blast to use, and the city you're given to explore is an extremely well designed playground with a ton of things to discover and collect.

P.S.: Kudos to Sucker Punch for nailing the open world character swimming problem right on the head. Why can't he swim? He's a walking generator. Done. Bravo.
Continue Reading..

Filler - What the hell, Sucker Punch?...

Thanks guys. Someone REALLY dropped the ball on this one.

Reign of evil starts now with conviction. Review before weekend's over.

Next up? Sony and Nintendo's keynotes.

Continue Reading..

Quick Thoughts - Identity Crisis

Sucker Punch, Volition, Radical.

All three of you developers want me to run around in an open world and blow..



shit...



...up.



But I can't tell the difference between the three of you. I mean, you all have slight variations in your template, but I'm beginning to think open world destruction is this year's big thing.

It's not necessarily a bad thing, given that many of our galaxies, our gaming careers have revolved around some sort of destruction or conquering spirits, but I'm sincerely hoping too much isn't TOO much.

Having played at least 8 hours (and then some) of inFamous though...I am almost too impressed. Sucker Punch has really created something amazing, though I'll touch on it as soon as I reach the end.

P.S. - After finishing the first mission, the game told me, based on my performance, they were switching me to HARD (yes in all capitals) difficulty. I haven't looked back since. Great game.
Continue Reading..

Getting My Ass To Mars - Red Faction:Guerrilla Impressions

So I played the Red Faction: Guerrilla demo.

I remember reading some time ago that one of the members of Volition hated the decision to change the gameplay from a first-person perspective to third person. I'll admit right off the bat that I wasn't particularly interested in the title to begin with -- I'm sorry guys, but the prospect of mindlessly blowing things up doesn't appeal to me nearly as much as it used to.


I played the first Red Faction on my PS2 a very long time ago, and had a great deal of fun with it. The action was fun and frantic, and the "Geo-Mod" technology--which allowed the player to blow a large hole in everything within reason--was wildly innovative compared to the indestructible corridors and environments of yesteryear. Unfortunately, yesteryear is indeed yesteryear, and what was once a maddeningly hilarious timesink is now a bit stale (I was famous for taking a rocket launcher and making fun tunnels during multiplayer matches). While the Geo-Mod tech powering RF: Guerilla does make for some fantastic explosions and environmental destruction cornucopias of glass, metal, stone, and wood splintering and flying everywhere, the actual gameplay is a bit unspectacular, and left a bit of a dry taste in my mouth.

These days, blowing shit up is as fun as punching people walking around the streets of Vice City. Really, I mean it. If you need some instant humor for your game just set up explosives in the most conveniently unfortunate places for the enemy and watch the debris fly.



As I booted up the demo, I was in pursuit of just that. I started off with a sledgehammer, and of course, the first thing I did was see just HOW far my influence went. Stone walls, rocks, buildings, 95% of what I touched with that huge blunt object rumbled and cracked, and it was awesome to watch it all go down. I didn't care about my objective to sieze some kind of walker and make tracks, I was too busy being Bam Bam. But the demo had to be played, and eventually I ran out of things to smash. Playing the game itself was inevitable, and suddenly my enjoyment diminished. Things were blowing up fine, ragdoll was humorous, and the ending explosive truck chase did a great deal in making sure I was glued to my seat, but at the end of the day, it all felt a bit dry.


(You get to drive this thing before the close, and it's as awesome as it looks)

The core shooting and movement controls felt loose and sloppy, the weapons aside from the sledgehammer and grenades lacked any sort of punch, and their small clips of ammo did much to make matters worse when I realized there were an infinite number of APCs shuttling grunts into every firefight. Eventually I started grabbing the random trucks littered around the area and went running people over GTA style.



When the demo ended, I was shown the birdseye view of a massive map, and it only reinforced what I felt before. There was a period after Grand Theft Auto 3 came out when every game needed to have some sort of open world format in order to make it out there. Racing games, FPS games, if there was a genre, companies were scrambling to get it in their games, lest the trend die out without them having capitalized on what was the newest craze. I've personally always seen it as a crutch, a copout for when you're too lazy to pace and plot your game the right way. Why bother with level design when you can make an entire field? Why program setpieces and orchestrate tight gameplay moments when it can all be random? Why focus on evolving mechanics when you can create a sandbox full of the same directives, just with increasing difficulty? It became an excuse for lazy game design, and many games became the victim of developer fad chasing.

This game unfortunately reminded me of that era. Red Faction, in my opinion, never needed an open world to be valid, much like Burnout never did in order to remain relevant. In fact, the story, which tries so hard to be compelling and epic involving a story about an oppressive leader and rebel miners of some Mars colony, gets lost in the shuffle of "WOW BOOM" the game displays. I didn't care about my mission, I didn't even care about the objective, I simply plowed in and out in the most ridiculous fashion, and the demo ended telling me there was a LOT more where that came from. The game does a bunch of things moderately well, but nothing stands out on it's own, and what you're left with is a dusty version of Mercenaries with more destructible buildings.

I don't think there's anything wrong with putting your brain away for a while and indulging in some contracted demolition in the name of a good time, I just know there are better games to do it in.

That don't feel like a derivative mess. There's carjacking, there's guns, there's explosions, there's free roaming, and none of it really mattered to me because it felt so disconnected.

Call me an elitist if you'd like.. I was more impressed when the house was annihilated by a strider in Half Life: Episode 2



But that's just me.
Continue Reading..