Quantcast Magnus Risebro | Vagary.TV

About Author: Magnus Risebro

Description
Magnus Risebro usually lives deep in the bowels of Norway, but is currently on a year-long adventure in Zürich, Switzerland. He writes editorials and reviews concerning all things video-games.

Posts by Magnus Risebro

0

XBLA Review: The Splatters

By
Magnus Risebro
– April 22, 2012Posted in: Reviews, Xbox 360

With physics-based puzzlers abundant, the requisites for originality and quality within the genre have risen. Making a block fall over and bounce off another block is no longer sufficient. The Splatters seems to know this, but its attempts at relevance and innovation feel forced.

Puzzle games usually work because of a simple clever concept and ruleset: In Portal, you place portals in the environment; in Braid, you manipulate time; in World Of Goo, you build structures of goo balls. The Splatters’s premise is less elegant – Gelatinous, eerily smiling blobs are launched at stacks of bombs. Upon hitting a sharp edge or hard surface, the jelly-blobs explode into paint-like liquid which detonates the bombs at contact. Sometimes there are differently-colored bombs only able to detonate by using blobs of corresponding color. The gameplay happens in side-on 2D arenas with platforms, ramps to glide along and spikes to gut your blobs on. Victory happens when all bombs are cleared. So far, so decent.

Eventually, more mechanics are introduced, including a pseudo-time-reversal ability and a trick-system. These somewhat successfully add depth, though it’s a messy kind of depth that feels unshakably desperate. The mechanics have few, specific uses and can scarcely be twisted cleverly. For instance, the kinda-time-manipulation is only useful for shifting momentum on ramps or aligning goo-rain to hit bombs, techniques you’ll repeat innumerable times. Instead of few but dynamic mechanics, the game opts for many restrictive ones, and thus feels clumsy.

The Splatters rarely demands outside-the-box thought and, as the difficulty surges in later levels, it’s your split-second timing being challenged, rather than your strategic muscle. Exploring all of the possible approaches to a level is mostly straightforward, making for scant “Aha-that-was-right-in-front-of-my-face-the-whole-time” moments. This isn’t necessarily a detriment – many good ostensibly “puzzle” games have reflex-based, thoughtless gameplay. Indeed, The Splatters can be rewarding when you’re firing a blob at the right angle, timing your double-boost perfectly and seeing the bomb-stack showered in colored gunk, all with suitably squelchy sound-effects and cool zooming camera shots. But, with increasing regularity, my progress was arrested in scenarios demanding ridiculously tight timing and little else, where success was a mere numbers game of waiting – not trying – to get it right.

Ultimately, The Splatters is decent. The blob-flinging gameplay, despite its contrived design, is mostly solid. It features impressively elastic goo-physics and has a good volume of stages. There are far better places to squander 800 MS points, but you’ll mildly enjoy yourself if you are stuck playing it.

Pros:

  • Cool semi-liquid physics model
  • Plenty of stages
  • Nice, tactile feel
  • …Fun?

Cons:

  • Ugly, Worms-esque visual design
  • Messy gameplay
  • Monotonous trial-and-error in later levels

3 out of 5.

0

XBLA Review: Sine Mora

By
Magnus Risebro
– April 3, 2012Posted in: Magnus' Blog, Reviews, Xbox 360

As someone who favors the atmosphere/story-driven side of gaming over the score-chasing one, my experience with Shoot-‘Em-Ups (Schmups among friends) is limited. The odd flash title or bonus minigame aside, I hadn’t penetrated the world of diabolical bullet patterns and gradually improving laser cannons and honestly, had little drive to do so. Sine Mora’s fascinating story concept and alluring art design overcame my biases, but even with the quality of these elements very high, the game is a slightly dubious value proposition to non-Schmup-enthusiasts.

The premise is creative to say the least. Set in a dieselpunk universe where one race has almost driven another extinct, it cycles perspective, place and time with every level and handles topics as high-concept as genocide and time-travel. Furthering the peculiarity, characters are depicted as hungarian-speaking anthropomorphized animals. I say “depicted” because the bison-man’s son is a cat-man and the characters’ animal species is never addressed, seemingly irrelevant to the aforementioned ethnical struggles.

The story can be hard to follow due to foggy narrative, but is strong nonetheless. Chapters are introduced by voiced text-vignettes containing a 40/60 split of relevant plot info and anecdotal nuggets of exposition. These are beautifully written and infallibly compelling, but as the sole form of story delivery besides ingame chatter, they leave much to the player’s guessing. This is arguably a merit, as it creates a strong sense of mystique and wonder about what is essentially a rather basic plotline – an effect somewhat offset by the literal encyclopedia unlocked at the campaign’s completion. Still, the story is certainly memorable, and easily one of the game’s strong suits.

Even distilled down to pure Schmup-gameplay, Sine Mora is decidedly solid and entertaining: The screen scrolls automatically while the player pilots a ship on a 2D plane of movement, ducking seas of projectiles and firing back at a gallery of airships, tanks, boats, insects, giant larvae, robo-spiders and laser-cannons disguised as observatories.

Besides an upgradeable standard gun, you have at your disposal a character-specific, limited-ammo special attack and the F.E.A.R-style ability to temporarily slow down time, governed by a bar refillable with pickups. The primary gameplay twist is the replacement of the health bar with an arcade-racing-style timer: Each hit from an enemy slices off precious seconds and each enemy killed regains them. While this health system won’t reinvent your Shoot-’em-up tactics, it secures a marked sense of urgency and tension that would otherwise disappear when your ship is a fully pimped-out death-machine. The game’s difficulty level is well above-average, too. Beating the campaign requires discipline, conscious strategy and many retries, and despite intermittently cheap trial-and-error design, this means a fulfilling sense of fair victory at every level’s end.

As worthy as the raw gameplay is, Sine Mora is more defined by its sharp art style and music: The colorful backgrounds show a beautiful world stuck between Sci-Fi and early 20th century while the electronic soundtrack pumps out tunes simultaneously gloomy and uplifting. The presentation’s high standard may not surprise with the famed Grasshopper Manufacture studio behind it, but the game’s art is a far cry from that of No More Heroes or Killer7. Combined with the aforementioned narrative, the visuals and music give Sine Mora a nuanced feel distinct from most videogames.

Besides the campaign, which – even with my iffy skill level – takes a mere three hours to complete, there’s a few score-focused bonus modes. If you want to wring out every ounce of depth from the gameplay, they’re perfect. An academic understanding of the mechanics is needed here, and luckily, they stand up to the scrutiny and stir up a sense of conquest far stronger than anything in the campaign at every improved highscore. To the less hardcore, they’re worth a spin to try out custom combinations of characters and ships, but little more.

Sine Mora is an interesting game by the merits of its story, music and visuals, but hardly interesting enough to warrant a $15 purchase for a measly two hours. Snooty Braid-loving types like myself should wait for a sale or price drop. In the meantime, Shoot-’Em-Up veterans can saturate the leaderboards with impossible-to-reach scores.

Pros:

  • Beautiful visuals
  • Beautiful music
  • Wonderfully original, surprisingly dark storyline and setting
  • Tight gameplay

Cons:

  • Short
  • Trial-and-error design
  • Overpriced, especially as a single-use experience.

3 out of 5

0

Review: Alan Wake’s American Nightmare

By
Magnus Risebro
– March 9, 2012Posted in: Reviews, Xbox 360

The original Alan Wake is a premier example of gameplay that, if separated from story, would place a game on the wrong side of decent. Luckily, a tight narrative, strong characterization, impeccable atmosphere and the right amount of peaceful farm-exploration easily made up for combat mechanics with all the depth of a thumb-wrestling match. So upon American Nightmare’s grindhouse-style announcement trailer suggesting an Alan Wake that shot first and waxed about Stephen King second, I was immediately cynical, thinking the original’s underwhelming sales (due to a release date within days of Red Dead Redemption’s) had forced on a significant dumbing-down.

Having played the game, it turns out my worries were a bit misplaced; American Nightmare does bring more narrative interesting-ness, as well as improvements on the third-person shooter combat. However, a limited scope and a story that, although fascinating, ends up futile make the game feel like an Alan Wake appetizer rather than the full meal fans have been hoping for.

The game makes it unclear, but it would seem the story in American Nightmare is not an actual continuation of the first game or its DLC, but a kind of suggestion, a “maybe” of how the plot proceeds, manifested as an episode of the fictional Twilight Zone-ripoff TV show, “Night Springs”. It features author Alan Wake chasing an evil clone of himself through a rural desert Arizona infected with Darkness, the evil spiritual force from the original. Playing into that framework is a dozen supernatural concepts and rules, which while occasionally seeming slightly flimsy, are intriguing enough to make one forget. The problem is how the tale wraps up – or rather, how it doesn’t. None of the interesting plot-lines are resolved, and instead, we get a superficial “happily ever after”. It might be that developer Remedy were afraid to go too far down a path which might not end up being canon, but a feeling of wasted potential still accompanies the end credits. Yet, even with a lacking conclusion, American Nightmare’s story is far ahead of the average videogame plot, and easy to immerse oneself in.

Doing much to make it so are the characters Alan encounters on his adventure, either through meeting them in person or hearing them on the radios scattered about. Their persona’s are all individually Hollywood-ey: There’s the logical scientist-woman, the artsy indie-chick and a handful more, but none of them pack a punch like Mr. Scratch, Alan’s aforementioned evil clone. Portrayed mostly in glorious FMV, Mr. Scratch is as close as the game gets to the grindhouse style hinted at by the marketing. Scratch is an evil bastard, and had he worn a mustache, he would surely twirl it with fervor. On in-game TV’s, he can be seen essentially video-blogging from a nondescript hotel room. In these videos, Scratch gleefully demonstrates his dastardliness, sometimes by violence to an innocent, sometimes by personal digs at Alan. Game writer Sam Lake plays Scratch with extravagant hamminess of the best kind, striking a nice chord between irony and sincerity. Along with the rest of the cast, Scratch gives the game personality, even if it’s not quite to the level of the first Alan Wake.

There’s a reasons why I’ve yet to describe the gameplay. As with the original, American Nightmare’s mechanics are far less engaging than its story: It’s a third-person shooter. Possessed maniacs run at you with axes, you deplete their darkness-shields by shining a flashlight before dumping some rounds into them. There’s the standard assortment of heavy/light enemies along with a few quirkier variants. Though similar to zombies in many ways, they never come in hordes big enough for Left 4 Dead-style chaos, and neither are their tactics advanced enough to warrant strategic play: Timing a dodge-move correctly, not equipping the crappy weapons and dropping flares in the middle of crowds is as deep as it  gets. The combat is technically solid enough to prevent severe frustration, but more time spent with it, the more you’ll want to skip to the next NPC interaction or story beat.

The larger structure of the game is a bit odd. Instead of linear levels, there are three mini-sandbox environments, each with its series of fetch-quests. Due to an early plot revelation involving a time-loop, you’ll sequentially play through these areas three times. The story and character dialogue change in interesting ways each playthrough, and the most tedious corners are cut in later runs, but there’s no denying the annoyance of re-playing the same mundane puzzles and switch-flipping objectives.

Remedying the occasional gameplay tedium is a significant, ever-present motivator: The hunt for manuscript pages. As in the first game, there are short voiced text vignettes written by Alan Wake lying around, both directly related to the plot and background-filling exposition-pieces. Language-quality in these is exceptional, and their content always fascinating. Penned in a style of deliberate pretentiousness fitting of Alan’s character, they are compelling reads/listens, and knowing each re-visited area meant new pages stemmed much of the monotony.

I originally assumed the repeating levels were consequence of a lower budget, but this theory was debunked once I played the Arcade Mode. Strangely featuring maps not sliced from the campaign, Arcade mode is a standard score and wave-based survival mode, as seen in the 21958773 other shooters on the market. You are dropped in a nighttime arena armed with a flashlight, a handgun and a combo-system and tasked with surviving until daybreak. Superior weapons can be picked up eventually. Aside from a damning lack of multiplayer, it’s a well-constructed mode. But as mentioned, Alan Wake’s combat stales rapidly outside the comfortable context of its narrative, so Arcade Mode little merit if you’re no compulsive completionist or highscore-junkie.

As a shooter, Alan Wake’s American Nightmare is merely decent. As a standalone, story-driven title, it’s confusing and almost meaningless. But as a fan-oriented side-chapter in an already compelling universe, it works perfectly. Its tiny duration of 3-4 hours won’t chew up much time, and you’ll have a batch of fresh ideas to ponder while waiting for the true second chapter in Alan Wake’s story.

Pros:

  • Interesting universe of the type seldom seen in videogames
  • Compelling narrative
  • Polished all-round feel

Cons:

  • Weak conclusion to the story
  • Combat is mediocre…
  • …decreasing the value of  arcade mode.

3 out of 5.

0

Quick Attack: Binary Domain

By
Magnus Risebro
– February 26, 2012Posted in: Magnus' Blog, PlayStation 3, Previews, Xbox 360

Quick Attack is where Vagary takes a look at a game we are working on for review and give you, the reader, a small taste of what we are experiencing. Think of it as a bullet-point preview with a review to follow.

Today, I played the first 90 or so minutes of cover-based, morality-based shooter Binary Domain on the Xbox 360. Below are my impressions.

  • The story, while having a certain Metal Gear Solid-esque melodrama to it, seems far above what one finds in the average shooter. Judging by the relatively short time I played, it seems the classic philosophical theme of “Are sentient robots alive?/What is humanity?” will play a major role.
  • The shooting is solid, but pretty standard fare. For a game as fantastical as this, the player character takes damage surprisingly quickly. Sticking to cover is important. The robot enemies take a few too many rounds to kill, but this issue may be helped as I upgrade my guns. There are kiosks in the levels, which allow you to buy supplies and increase weapon stats.
  • The squad-commands were actually useful, contrary to my expectations.
  • The game is heavy on interaction with your squadmates. So far, I have only one companion, a robust black dude with an attitude and a light machine gun to match. Interestingly, nearly all of the interaction can be done with a microphone during in-combat commands and casual chats. Though the list of recognized words is long (it includes the F-bomb, to my pleasure), the voice recognition is quite patchy, which led to several comical miscommunications; specifically, “help” was recognized as “nope” and “yes” as “cheers.”  In order to get it working at all, you have to take a recognition test to give the game references for what your voice sounds like. Oddly, the game recognized me best when I was using a British accent, so pro tip: Put on your thickest cockney.

In conclusion: I enjoyed my time with Binary Domain. It seems to have a substantial, slow-building plot, something I’m always a fan of, and this can redeem the game completely, even if the shooting is merely decent. The NPC interaction is also promising. Expect a full review soon.

0

Review: Resident Evil: Revelations

By
Magnus Risebro
– February 23, 2012Posted in: Nintendo 3DS, Reviews

It’s ironic that Resident Evil Revelations has been hyped up (and even marketed) as a return to the more deliberate, atmospheric, tense style of old school Resident Evil. In reality, this game pushes the series further into modern, western territory than it has ever been before. In doing so, some of Resi’s interesting quirk is lost, but the experience becomes less stilted and more playable.

Where Resident Evil 5 was survival horror with the atmosphere of an action game, Revelations is a third-person shooter with a horror aesthetic (see: Dead Space 2). It might be set in sparsely-lit environments where freakish mutants lunge from corners, but the creeping pace, abundance of puzzles, and scant supplies of earlier Resident Evil games is missing. This might put Resi veterans off, yet Revelations is a decidedly solid action game and should be enjoyed as such, regardless of franchise.

The plot – the element of the game most true to heritage – sees Jill Valentine and her burly spanish partner board an abandoned cruise ship in search of Chris Redfield, only to find, predictably, that the ship is not so abandoned after all and is full of shuffling slug-men and other nasty aquatic mutants. Actually, that’s only about half the plot. Soon, a convoluted narrative of back-stabbing and double-crossing is introduced and the plot thickens considerably, for better and worse. This conspiracy-story is occasionally interesting, but coated in Resi’s trademark layer of cheesiness, it becomes hard to take too seriously.

The most significant thing about the narrative is that it ties with one of Revelations’ major departures from the Resident Evil formula, the structure; shorter side-levels punctuate the time on the ghost ship and have you playing as other characters in various times and locations. While the cruise ship retains at least retains a semblance of classic Resi openness, these levels are purely linear and almost entirely action-focused. Furthermore, the game is divided into 30-40-minute chapters, most of which begin with an off-ship level and end with a cliffhanger. The new, more frenetic structure is a double-edged sword; While the regular switch-ups do much to keep monotony at bay, the Resi tension that came with  being stuck in a nasty place is dampened. When you’re so frequently whisked away from your persistent concerns and given a new batch of weapons, herbs, and ammo, worry has a hard time growing on you.

Having said that, the on-ship segments themselves do much to stop you from feeling any dread. I mentioned the ship was semi-open, but this matters little when you’re always guided through it by your partner, map markers and an unambiguous “OBJECTIVE:” tab. “Jill, I think we need to-” your partner will say, and then you’ll do just that. Seldom are any puzzles or unclear tasks involved, and seldom will you need to explore the ship of your own accord. In addition, ammo supplies are bountiful and inventory-management is all but gone, so you can merrily gun through most areas with the accuracy of a stormtrooper, free of concern. Also, inventory-management and herb-mixing are both cut, so you have a very blasting-focused game.

It’s a good thing then, that said blasting is thoroughly satisfying. Thanks to the addition of independent moving and aiming (should you have the Circle Pad Pro – without it, you can shoot and move, but not aim and move), combat flows much nicer than in any previous Resi. There’s a decent variety of freaks to mow down and the guns handle like you’d want them to, with said freaks recoiling appropriately at every well-aimed shotgun blast.

The combat gameplay’s closest cousin would probably be Dead Space, as it shares that game’s weighty and tactile feel. Impressively, the game intermittently throws in a console-size set piece too. From underwater segments to a helicopter showdown with a colossal boss creature, these switch-ups in gameplay and scale pace out the relatively predictable corridor-shooting to great effect.

In the way of multiplayer, there’s decent co-op by the name of Raid Mode. Here, you and a friend/online stranger will play through areas from the campaign populated by an increased number of enemies. Essentially, it’s a version of Resi’s classic Mercenaries mode that’s linear instead of arena-based. There are characters and costumes to unlock as well as guns, upgrades, health items etc. to buy as you rank up through a leveling system. Cooperative play doesn’t bring much to the core gameplay and teamwork is seldom necessary or beneficial but, as with most games, Revelations is fun with a partner. Still, a relatively low volume of content prevents this mode from having any real legs, especially as every level is cut from the campaign.

Finally, there’s the little nugget that Revelations looks damn good. From the opening ship deck where waves clash against the hull and rain showers gleaming metal and onwards, the fidelity being squeezed out of Nintendo’s handheld is worthy of high praise. The textures and particle effects are only a stone’s throw away from console-level. If we can get a title this good looking just one year into the 3DS’ lifetime, what visuals are in store for the future?

There is a short segment set in a mansion-like area early on in Revelations where you are left without weapons and are forced to dodge any enemies coming at you. During the 10 or so minutes this lasts, it’s easy to see the classic Resi spirit shine through. However, aside from the few moments like this, Revelations should be categorized a third-person shooter. Luckily, it’s a quite good one.

Pros:

  • The mutant-killng feels nice and meaty
  • Cool gameplay variety with quick pace
  • Incredible visuals
  • Raid mode boosts longevity, though not very much

Cons:

  • Messy, cheesy story
  • Little in the way of tension
  • Too easy

4 out of 5

1

Review: All Zombies Must Die!

By
Magnus Risebro
– February 6, 2012Posted in: PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360

This game was played on the Xbox 360

All Zombies Must Die is an odd case of modern game design-tropes working to a game’s detriment. The oft-celebrated model of fusing RPG-structure with action-gameplay is spread a little too thick here, hurting what is an otherwise solid title.

As with most zombie-related titles nowadays, AZMD is very tongue-in-cheek about its story. This is something I’m often skeptical of, as certain games seem to use it only to escape the effort of a serious narrative. Luckily, the plot, which sees four comedy characters assemble to survive an unexplained zombie apocalypse, doles out sincere chuckles on a consistent basis. Specifically, the sub-plot involving the main characters’ conviction that he is in a videogame provides good laughs. Throw in some strong pop-culture references and you have a one of the funniest games to come along in a while.

As for the gameplay, anyone familiar with dual-stick shooters will quickly be at home with the controls – Top-down perspective, left stick to move, right stick to aim. Zombies will home in on you and you’ll navigate around them, lining up shots and collecting pickups. Where the game differs from the basic formula is mainly in structure. Instead of a linear series of levels, the game is set in a mostly open world segregated into arena-like zones. To progress, you’ll complete a series of standard kill/fetch-quests, upgrading your stats and crafting new weapons on the way.

For a while, this spattering of RPG design has the desired effect; the carrot-on-a-stick of new weapons and better murdering-capabilities will motivate you to continue, making what is in reality well-trodden gameplay ground sparkle with new life. But it’s only after a few hours that fatigue kicks in: When running through the same 8 arenas, carrying out what is only a slight variation on an objective you’ll have done 15 times beforehand, the appeal starts to wither. It becomes a grind.

It’s a shame, because the moment-to-moment gameplay in AZMD is actually rather good: There’s a great, tactile feel to mowing down the zombie hordes, much thanks to some nifty and suitably cartoony animation. The weapons are all distinct enough in function and feel to warrant changing your inventory regularly. There’s a cool mechanic of zombies being affected by elements like fire, electricity or radiation, each with different effects, which also transfers to the crafting system, where you can modify weapons to apply those effects when fired.

The problem arises when this solid yet quite by-the-numbers gameplay is tasked with supporting the RPG-like structure. There’s simply not enough substance to it for it stay meaningful in the face of the six-hour series of treks through the same few environments the game has you endure. Playing the game in four-player co-op mode (local multiplayer only) or in shorter bursts remedies this problem somewhat, but still does not remove it outright: AZMD is simply too repetitive.

All Zombies Must Die asks too much of the basic dual-stick shooter formula and suffers for it, but it’s still a well-crafted game that will please fans of its genre. Play it in Co-op and pay attention to the jokes for maximum enjoyment.

Pros:

  • Good feel and some depth to the gameplay
  • Charming presentation
  • Funny

Cons:

  • Becomes far too monotonous
  • Occasional glitches

3 out of 5

0

XBLA Review: Joe Danger: Special Edition

By
Magnus Risebro
– January 24, 2012Posted in: Reviews, Xbox 360

Joe Danger: Special Edition features vibrant and catchy music, however, the sound that will ring in your ears after playing is no melody, it’s the gut-wrenching “KERCHUNK” of failure. This sound near-constantly jabs at your ears during the 6 or so hours it takes to finish the career-mode. But whenever that horrible effect is played you’ll instantly punch the Back button to start your umpteenth attempt of the level because the one-more-go-factor shines with this one.

Essentially, Joe Danger is a physics-based, more complicated Excitebike focusing on traversal rather than racing. As titular stuntman Joe Danger, you ride your motorbike through a series of side-scrolling obstacle-courses filled with platformer-style hazards. Interspersed with these standard levels are races, which ramp up the chaos a few notches. To progress, one performs level-specific challenges such as collecting items or finishing within a set time. By doing this, stars are earned and used to unlock new levels.

Great controls are largely responsible for how entertaining the game is: The bike-physics are tuned to a perfect sweet-spot between nimble and weighty, making it satisfying and simple – though not necessarily easy – to pull off jumps, flips and tricks. Contrary to certain other precision-based, platforming-style games, the controls in Joe Danger are never a hurdle between player and game, and instead manage to reach the ideal state of any control system – to feel nonexistent.

The second half of Joe Danger’s Yin-Yang of great gameplay is the level design. Early on, the game teaches you the simple key concepts; boosting, tilting the bike in the air, and jumping. Subsequently, your skills with these concepts are tested in an increasingly devilish fashion. Often, the game tricks you by repeatedly incentivizing a certain maneuver, only to throw out a situation where you must deliberately NOT perform that maneuver to succeed. The level design consistently forces you to keep an open mind and rethink your techniques, giving the game a slight puzzle-game feel.

As for the volume of content: Besides the 6-8 hour career mode there is an additional, Special Edition-exclusive, “The Lab” campaign featuring extra-challenging levels, as well as a level-editor similar to LittleBigPlanet (though not nearly as comprehensive, and sadly lacking the ability to share levels with anyone but your friends). Both of these provide more Joe Danger, an undeniably good thing, but are definitely complimentary rather than essential to the game. Finally, there is split-screen multiplayer, which I could not test, but imagine is solid.

Giving the game a pleasant vibe is the Pixar-like aesthetic. Cartoony and colorful backgrounds, hummable and upbeat music, and Joe’s regular shouts of “Wahoo! Yee-haw!” will glue a wide grin to your face, at least until the challenge becomes too much and you start Dragonborn-shouting cuss-words at the screen. Nonetheless, the jolly presentation is a nice element, and certainly improves the game’s experience.

Joe Danger is everything an Arcade game should be in the classic sense. It’s to-the-point, it’s easy to learn yet hard to master, and above all, it’s fun. Even with the “Kerchunk”-based ear-torture, it’s well worth 1200 Microsoft points.

Pros:

  • Satisfying, arcadey gameplay
  • Bonus modes provide a wealth of content
  • Charming presentation

Cons:

  • Can be hard. No-longer-fun-hard.

4/5

0

Review: Nuclear Dawn

By
Magnus Risebro
– December 12, 2011Posted in: PC, Reviews


People who subscribe to a philosophy of sacrifice for eventual greater good will have a jolly old time with Nuclear Dawn. Unfortunately for those with lenient moral principles, the gameplay consists of slightly more “Sacrifice” than “Greater good”, a condition one must accept before appreciating the game.

Essentially, Nuclear Dawn is a 32-player class-based multiplayer shooter where 15 of 16 players on each team play the role of cannon fodder grunts through a Counter-Strike/Battlefield/Team Fortress 2 hybrid  FPS while the remaining two people play an RTS. It’s an undeniably interesting concept, and the fact that it even remotely works is commendable.

As a commander, you place healing stations, spawn points, automated turrets and such on the map. These installations must be constructed within your power network, which is expanded by building power nodes. As an FPS-view foot soldier you pick one of four classes (stealth-guy, shoot-guys-guy, heavy-guy and repairing/healing-people guy) and set out to capture currency-generating stations on the map allowing the team more constructions, while taking out constructions – and combatants – of the enemy team. The ultimate goal is to destroy the enemy team’s main spawn bunker, usually achieved through gradual expansion of territory until one team’s rocket turrets are conducting perpetual – and if you are on the losing team, horribly annoying – spawn killings.

If sending AI soldiers to their deaths does not satisfy your ego enough, get Nuclear Dawn.

The FPS gunplay is surprisingly tight for something constituting only half a game, packing a level of punch and precision above many dedicated shooters. The guns have satisfying visual and audial feedback, and class and loadout is adapted for specific situations without being completely useless outside their niche; the medic’s SMG performs best in corridors but your keyboard won’t suffer your frustrated slammings if you get caught in a long-range firefight with it.

The RTS side of things works moderately well too, though my exposure to it is limited (The highest ranking players are usually selected for the commander roles, and this game boasts a small, but hardcore, community meaning newbies are seldom allowed commander roles). Your success is quite reliant on the underlings (players) obeying your orders, something which might have been a disaster on the douchebag-infested console online services, but is not a problem in the gentlemanly society of PC gaming. The commanders have a disproportionately massive influence on the battle, which is the cause of nearly all of Nuclear Dawn’s issues:

Not only is serving under an incompetent commander caps-lockingly frustrating, even a tactically efficient commander will employ tactics that make playing as a grunt a sour experience. The game is balanced to make it fair with regards to which team wins and loses, not with regards to the FPS player’s moment-to-moment experience. Oftentimes, you are supposed to continually grind your head against the enemy as part of the larger plan. Getting stuck in horrible bullet-hail bottlenecks is a mere side effect for the benefit of eventual victory. You’ll encounter situations whose effect on most FPS players would yield a furious hate-mail in the game’s developer’s inbox, but giving an individual FPS player immediate satisfaction ranks low on Nuclear Dawn’s list of priorities.

This is where the game will lose many people’s attention. Players craving quick-fix gameplay typical of the modern multiplayer FPS will struggle to enjoy it. Unless you get satisfaction from knowing you are helping achieve a longer-term goal, the majority of the time spent in Nuclear Dawn will seem a chore rather than a pleasure.

However, if you do accept these terms and are able to thrive within them, the experience of Nuclear Dawn can be thrilling. Seeing your opponents’ base riddled with explosions, decreasing health bars and soldiers getting spawn-killed is a great reward for having out-cooperated them over the course of a fifteen-minute, highly methodical tug of war. Not to mention that sweet moment when you realize a battle is turning in your favor, or conversely, the sudden panic when things are clearly going sour. The high level of tactical depth (again, on the large scale rather than the small one) ensures these moments keep coming, as there is a near-constant multitude of strategies for a team to consider, keeping things tense and unpredictable.

It’s a nice bonus that the game is up to snuff in terms of presentation, too. The battles are fought mostly in apocalyptic near-future versions of iconic cityscapes such as London, Tokyo and New York, and these settings are created with an air of believability and scale that balances out their relative genericness. Grass stretches up through cracked sidewalks, crumbling skyscrapers tower above you, and the wet floor of a subway station reflects the neon lights above it. It’s lucky the game runs on the highly scaleable Source engine, so even mediocre computers ought to be able to handle it with minimal friction.

Nuclear Dawn is a low-priced and very interesting game being played by a dedicated and friendly community, which might well be worth the high barrier to entry, reoccurring frustration and intermittent technical cock-ups you may suffer.

Pros: Cool, if slightly generic, art style, gameplay rich in depth and originality.

Cons: Moderately hard to get into, requires buckets of patience, intermittent technical issues.

3 out of 5.

2

Review: Resident Evil: Code Veronica X HD

By
Magnus Risebro
– November 14, 2011Posted in: PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360

Chris here is in for frustration when he realizes those grenade rounds were meant for a boss two hours down the line.

The Resident Evil series is a funny old tale. Both a symbol of Japanese ingenuity and of Japanese gaming industry rut, the series has broken through one moment and broken down the next. The 1996 original made such an impression with its precisely crafted atmosphere, dual story campaigns, zombie dogs, Jill Sandwiches, hardcore item management, and doors being locked from the other side that Capcom seemed to have felt the way forward for the series was to turn everything up to 11 rather than to re-innovate. Indeed, it was not until Resident Evil 4 in 2005 that the series got some much-needed revitalization.

Even at its 2000 launch Code Veronica was hardly forward-thinking, and this HD re-polish does almost nothing to accommodate the decade of advancement that has since occurred in videogames. So despite a still-strong atmosphere, sense of place and flashes of ingenuity, Code Veronica feels clunky and plodding in too many of its elements.

Anything that constitutes “gameplay” is either dry, frustrating, or a combination of the two. Stripping away atmosphere, story and nicely designed environments leaves Code Veronica as a game of bringing key item A to keyhole B while making sure you fill your six/eight-slot inventory with the right combination of power weapons, normal weapons and health items. Figuring out which key to bring to which keyhole is either obvious or trial & error, seldom logic. The combat is never challenging, it’s only a matter of having a correctly managed inventory. If you do, it’s piss-easy, if you don’t, you either die or lose enough health/ammo to warrant reloading a save. Don’t even think of trucking on without those resources, as it’s very possible to save yourself into a no-ammo, no-healing items corner, forcing a full restart. The only real way to be skillful at Code Veronica is to have played it already, and if you haven’t, regularly reloading saves is a necessity. Great fun, repetition does not make.

You’ll push (and re-push) through this gameplay by means of Resident Evil’s infamous “tank controls”, whose presence in this game is utterly nonsensical. See, the original Resident Evil had these controls because there was no other decent way to navigate shifting pre-rendered backgrounds. Those pre-rendered backgrounds were there because the original Playstation couldn’t handle a fully 3D environment of the detail the game required. Code Veronica, however, launched on the Dreamcast and subsequently has polygonal graphics. Yet, bizarrely, the uncontrollable camera angles stay the same. They might occasionally pan, turn and zoom, but the controls of old remain, ensuring no player movement ever goes smoothy.

The framing for the gameplay hardly excels either. Opening with some cheesy, grimy CG, the plot centers on Claire and Chris Redfield discovering an organ of the Umbrella corporation headed by a cartoonishly evil aristocratic family. True to tradition, the voiceacting and script are both horrendous. Though not featuring classic lines of the “Master of Unlocking” calibre, cringe-fans will find plenty to enjoy here nonetheless, specifically in the astoundingly awkward interactions between Claire and supporting character Steve. Even when separated from the dialogue, the plot is uninteresting, not that it’s a signifanct bother.

Though the central narrative is trite, the world in which it takes place is as great as it tends to be in Resident Evil. Every location is designed with masterful nuance, instilling a sense of discomfort through audio and visual design that inspires images far more disturbing than the game’s reality. The eerie ting of flies hitting against a glass lamp and the steam-filled concrete corridors dotted with shadowy corners will sculpt in your mind a monster that no amount of health-spray or flame grenade rounds can slay. But instead, the game presents a monster easily taken down with a shotgun and some corner-camping techniques. Oh well.

In Resident Evil: Code Veronica X HD (gotta love them Capcom titles), enjoyable moments are the exception, tedium is the rule. It might be a worthwhile pursuit and purchase for historic or nostalgic purposes, but otherwise, it’s difficult to enjoy with any consistency.

Pros: Thick atmosphere, brilliant level design

Cons: Consistently clunky and tedious gameplay

2 out of 5

1

XBOX 360 Review: Crysis

By
Magnus Risebro
– October 11, 2011Posted in: Reviews, Xbox 360

Crysis has long been a mantlepiece on the fireplace of PC gamer pride. For four years, it’s been the un-portable game and a symbol of PC superiority – both for its graphical sophistication and because it features the kind of freedom-filled gameplay the PC gaming demographic admires. Then Crysis 2 was released multiplatform, and the gameplay felt it. Though still not as linear as the average console FPS, Crysis 2 could no longer be spoken of as a “sandbox-shooter”. Which is why console-only gamers ought to be interested in a re-release of the original Crysis’ single-player in this mostly unaltered form.

The game’s un-thrilling storyline is mostly context for you to hunt gun-toting soldiers in jungle environments, but let me synopsize it nonetheless: A group of American archeologists discover some Mysterious Stuff (TM) on an island near the Philippines. Soon after, the North-Korean military invade the island and the archeologists send out a distress signal. You are a member of the US Delta Force team (strangely including a member with a London accent) sent in to recover the archeologists. But shortly after parachuting onto the island, your squadmates start getting killed off by what’s best described as flying robotic squid. Your rapidly decreasing number of living squad members casually shrug this off as something that’s just a bit weird, and deem it better to focus on the mission at hand than bother with the petty discovery of extraterrestrial creatures. The game drops hints so obvious it’s barely a spoiler to reveal these squids turn out to be aliens, which is the game’s primary plot-twist and what sets off its eventual decline in gameplay quality.

Brief history lesson:
With Far Cry in 2004, German developer Crytek showed the FPS genre the way forward in the same year Doom 3 showed it the way backwards. Where Id’s game was set in restrictive metallic corridors, Far Cry’s levels were ultra-wide paths with confrontations happening across hundreds of square meters. And while it’s true that it eventually deteriorated into a series of corridor-crawls with flesh-colored mutants charging towards you, Far Cry had made its point: Freedom was the way forward for first-person shooters.

Crysis, the spiritual successor, was released three years later to great hype about it being the most graphically advanced game of all time and subsequently impossible to port to consoles. But more importantly, it was positioned to expand on the ideas of Far Cry and offer even more open combat goodness. And for three fifths of the game, it does. It’s a serious shame the last 90 minutes are such a deterioration.

See, when Crysis is good, it’s astonishingly good. Even four years on, the game (that is, the good part) leaves contemporary shooters looking like antiques. You’ll carefully navigate down jungle roads, hear the rumble of a patrol car, dive into roadside bushes and “tag” the vehicle passing by. You’ll examine military bases from hilltops and contemplate, “from which side of this gigantic valley do I strike?”. You’ll creep into shanty-towns and silently murder everyone inside. Or you wont. Maybe you’ll climb the highest mountain in range, get out a rocket launcher, and level the whole town from range. Maybe, instead of hiding from the previously mentioned patrol car, you’ll shoot its driver and get behind the wheel yourself.

“Enabled but under constant threat“ would be a good way to summarize the Crysis’ experience. Your ability comes both from the massive environments and from the SUIT OF KEVLAR MUSCLE your character is wearing. The so-called Nanosuit enables you to sprint, power-jump, power-punch, increase damage resistance and turn invisible, all governed by a recharging meter. Extra abilities in FPS games were nothing new even in 2007, but Crysis sets itself apart in how elegantly they complement the gameplay. Far from the gimmicks they tend to be elsewhere, Crysis’ suit powers encourage experimental play, rather than being win buttons.

But being highly enabled is no fun if you don’t have an opposing force to test yourself against, and Crysis delivers here too. Your enemies are armed to the teeth, and often holed up in defensible locations surrounded by machinegun-bunkers, sniper-towers, patrolling helicopters, tanks, humvees and minefields. Not to mention the soldiers outside the bases, who frequently catch you unawares and subsequently fill your behind with lead. Their AI, while experiencing the odd “senior citizen moment”, performs adequately too.

The sense of being extremely capable and being faced against mighty opposition is nothing short of thrilling and is a cornerstone of Crysis’ appeal. You have to constantly be wary of your surroundings and think three steps ahead, and this makes moment-to-moment gameplay very rewarding.

After around five-six hours of this greatness, the game suddenly falls apart. Over the remaining 90-120 minutes, Crysis manages to commit every cardinal sin possible by a first person shooter. There’s a terrible mini-boss fight. There’s a frustratingly long zero-gravity section where you fly about gunning down gelatinous mermaids. There’s an escort mission through a linear environment that is spent shooting hovering drones and the aforementioned flying robo-squid. There’s a Doom 3-esque corridor level set aboard an aircraft carrier. And, as the game’s finale, there’s a glitchy and frustrating boss fight against a colossal crab-like bullet sponge. What happened?

Where the game’s earlier scenarios are brilliant, forward-thinking game design, the final 30-40% feel like long-irrelevant leftovers from mid-90’s FPS philosophy. The foes you fight in these parts have no interesting AI patterns to figure out, are always aware of your location, and are fought in restrictive environments not allowing flanking techniques. Tragically, Crysis repeats Far Cry’s mistake in a big way.

So how does the Xbox port of this Greek tragedy perform in comparison to the PC original? Patchily. It’s still visually impressive but suffers from unacceptable amounts of slowdown and framerate drop during intense combat. It can get near-unplayable. Luckily, you’ll seldom be subject to these issues if you play stealthily, but more aggressive tactics will yield firefights that hamper the performance to varying degrees, depending on the amount of vehicular and infantry units involved. There’s also a very prevalent glitch with the music: It would near-infallibly stop mid-track in a very jarring fashion instead of smoothly ending. This occurred during the final cutscene, butchering the mood. Closing out the differences between console and PC versions, there’s a gunship-piloting level which has been cut from this version, but I can’t attest to its quality or importance.

The dramatic dip in quality seen in the last levels of Crysis lowers it from the status of “must-play” to that of “worth trying”. The technical problems of the Xbox version decrease that status even further, making it a dubious recommendation, especially at a price tag above XBLA/PSN titles of a higher quality.

Pros: Forward-thinking and well executed FPS gameplay during the majority of the game, great visuals.

Cons: Horrible quality dip in final two fifths, reoccurring technical issues, unexciting storyline.

3 out of 5

« Older Entries