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Gamescom 2011: Super Mario 3D Land Preview

By
Magnus Risebro
– August 19, 2011Posted in: Magnus' Blog, Nintendo 3DS/DSi/DS, Previews

3D Mario titles have not resembled their 2D brethren much in the past. The immediate, twitchy feel of the iconic plumber’s side-scrolling outings is not very present in Super Mario 64, Sunshine, or the Galaxy games. Those games have a far slower, more careful feel, which is natural given the imprecision of 3D games compared to 2D ones. With Super Mario 3D Land, it seems Nintendo are trying to fuse gameplay styles old and new, which ideally would mean a game which is both easy to pick up and play and deep enough to warrant spending precious sofa-time on. Judging from the four-level demo I played here at Gamescom, the game leans heavily on the pick-up-and play angle, with short levels and uncomplicated gameplay.

Though it plays in 3D, it is very dissimilar to the aforementioned 3D Mario’s. For starters, big, open worlds like Bob-Omb Battlefield are replaced by linear paths consisting largely of floating platforms, the closest relation to which would be the more platform-y sections in Sunshine and Galaxy. But where those parts were challenging and fast-paced, what I played was a touch plodding. I never got that edge-of-your seat sense of platforming-peril present in the SNES and NES Mario games. That’s not necessarily an issue, Mario 64 and Galaxy don’t really have that feel either, but they compensate with intricate, explorable worlds chock-full of interesting stuff, and 3D Land, as far as I can see, lacks this.

The four levels I played had no brain-bending platforming concepts, interesting enemies, or other significant thrills. The closest it got was a take on the Airship Fortresses from Bros. 3, and even that required far less platforming and projectile-dodging skill than the originals. Super Mario 3D Land is not fast-paced, satisfyingly challenging or precise like older Mario’s, and neither is it grandiose and clever like the 3D ones. It’s stuck in a rather dry middle ground. Simply put, the demo of the game was not particularly fun or interesting, a severe disappointment for a new “true” Mario game, something we don’t get too often. Sure, it felt nicely polished the way most Nintendo games do, with smooth framerate, colorful environments, and nice animation.

It works, and it works well, but what it does fails to engage much.

It could well be that these levels were intentionally simplistic and plain for demo purposes, and that more interesting stages appear in other parts of the game, but if this demo is anything to judge by, Nintendo fans are in for  an unexpected disappointment.

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Bastion Review

By
Magnus Risebro
– August 9, 2011Posted in: Magnus' Blog, PC, Reviews, Staff Blogs, Xbox 360

Most  games, even good ones, feel a little cynical in their design. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a title that isn’t at least partially designed to meet demands of the market, as a designer’s vision has a tendency to become a bigger, dumber, more financially viable version of the idea once the notion of profit comes into play. It’s the nature of an industry this big.

Yet somehow, Bastion completely evades this entire problem. It’s rare that you’ll play a game that feels as undiluted, as genuine, and as straight from the heart as Bastion does. Every single fragment of the game is directly in service of what I imagine to be the original vision behind it.

And what a vision it is. Set in a post-apocalypse the likes of which you’ve never seen, Bastion’s setting easily rivals something like Bioshock’s in terms of originality. We see a fantasy land after a catastrophic event known as “The Calamity”, which seemingly caused huge slabs of earth to detach from the ground and float towards the sky. “Seemingly” because much of Bastion’s tale is told by implication. The game assumes that players are reasonably intelligent individuals capable of reading between lines, a nice departure from the overt storytelling seen in most games. The plot should be commended  for spinning a tired videogame narrative structure (collect X number of magical Y) into something truly fresh, and all endings in the game (that’s right) are delivered with impact and closure.

Though Bastion fits the description of “2D Isometric Action-Rpg”, expecting a grindy, button-mashy dungeon-crawler will leave you surprised. Upgrading of weapons, equipping passive boosters and levelling up are all significant elements, but moment-to-moment gameplay feels far more immediate and intense than something like Dungeon Siege does. Simply strolling up to an enemy and relying on your +16 DAM Battle-ax and 8+ DEF Shoulder pads to do the work will fail you, as actively evading and blocking incoming attacks while properly timing your own is a constant necessity.

Bastion has a near-perfect curve of complexity and difficulty. Starting out with little depth, then gradually introducing wider varieties of weapons, upgrades, enemies and combat situations, the game keeps the player thinking on his feet and making hard choices regarding weapon and upgrade selection.  Staring at menu screens for ages, contemplating how to spend precious money was a frequent occurrence during my playthrough.

The focal selling point of Bastion has been the near-constant vocal narration accompanying gameplay. One of the central characters, a gravely-voiced badass with old-western mannerisms, describes and offers input on many of the ingame events. Equip a certain weapon combo, for example, and he might comment that this specific combination was used by a certain order of warriors before The Calamity. The writing of this narration is exceptionally sharp, and carries wit, intrigue, and darkness.

The game’s first chapter seems keen to convince you of the narration being highly dependent on how you play, but this doesn’t persist much past the first twenty minutes. I was wholly impressed when, early on, the narrator precisely described that I was “rolling about like crazy” when trying to avoid danger, and later disappointed when this level of specificity did not keep up during the rest of the game. That minor complaint aside, the narration coats the action with an ever-present layer of humanity and atmosphere and is a very welcome addition.

It helps that the implementation of this narration is clever. No nook and cranny of Bastion goes untouched by it. Even what equates to score attack and survival modes are made oasises of plot-exposition, with all-important character backstory told verbally as you earn high scores and survive waves of enemies. To me, being told more of Bastion’s rich story is a better motivation to play these modes than any “A” rank could ever be. Bonus modes smartly appear during the main game instead of being options on a menu screen, keeping players immersed even when they want some extra challenge.

Bastion sports an unfamiliar and distinct mood, and this is owed a great deal to the fantastic music and art style. The soundtrack is part Fight Club, part western, part world music and all joy for the ears. The visual style is reminiscent of Braid’s, albeit manga-influenced and more colorful. Together, they create an atmosphere that’s simultaneously melancholic and adventurously hopeful.

The adjective “original” can often be a minefield to use, and in my years on gaming forums, I have seen it spark many a fiery debate. Even using “original” with great precaution, I am of the firm opinion that Bastion earns this description 100%. You will not regret a purchase of this game or your hours spent playing it. It’s different and fresh in a back-to-basics way that few games seem to be, buried under standards and conventions.

5 out of 5.

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iPhone Review: 9mm

By
Magnus Risebro
– July 15, 2011Posted in: Blogs, Magnus' Blog, Mobile Gaming, Reviews

John Whoo?

If a 10 year-old were to watch (and completely misunderstand) Training Day, listen to a few hundred hours of 90’s gangsta rap, and then be given the task of writing and directing a videogame,  the ensuing product would likely resemble 9mm – the newest chapter in Gameloft’s epic quest to emulate big console experiences on smartphones.

However, where most of Gameloft’s previous attempts at this were rip-offs of major franchises  – so blatant, discussions between lawyers were bound to have occurred – 9mm actually refrains from photocopying a specific title. Well, at least in the aesthetics department. Make no mistake, in gameplay terms, 9mm is Max Payne, only dumped into the world of GTA: San Andreas and coated in gallons upon gallons of the most artificial and fattening cheese. But at least the hero is not called “Jax Rayne”.

No, you are John Kannon, a name that earns its golden spot in the Subtlety-Free Hero-Names-Hall of Fame right, alongside Speed Racer. John “Loose” Kannon, as he is known, is a COP ON THE EDGE. He patrols the suburban ghettos of Los Angeles, where stereotypical racial-minority gangbangers breakdance on the pavements, guns in hand. John refers to this area as his “turf”. He dons a leather jacket over a hoodie, and wears his police badge like a Bun B wears a gold chain. Every fifth word out of his mouth also happens to be that lovely four-letter synonym for “fornicate”, so you know he’s a tough one.

"Are you the ****ing **** that wrote my ****ing terrible dialogue?"

Kannon, during what appears to be his usual schedule of kicking down doors, diving in slow motion, and shooting up crackhouses, comes across big stashes of dirty money and a new drug that has been “on the streets” lately. Being the above-the-law badass the game wants us to consider him, Kannon and his team of undeveloped, equally badass archetypes decide to more or less keep the dough for themselves. And thus the delightful plot of 9mm kicks off. A story of police officers who refer to unoffending civilian women as “that hoe”, told with clichés so hamfisted “ham-armed” would be a more appropriate term.

I’m not the type to enjoy bad stories “ironically”, but in its opening cinematic alone, 9mm pushed me past the point of groaning, to giggling hysterically at every vocal exchange in the game. Kannon, for one, sounds like he is voiced by a middle-aged suburban dad, and hearing him deliver golden lines like “it’s raining bacon, motherf***ers!” is a cringe-inducing joy. As 9mm coughs up one crime-film stereotype after another, it’s hard not to be pleased.

But the majority of the time spent in 9mm will not be in cutscenes, but rather in the process of Max Payning gangstas to death — something the game does competently. The touch-controls, while inevitably never feeling truly comfortable, are cleverly designed, offering balanced amounts of control and simplicity.

And “simple” neatly describes the gameplay, too. Not being bothered with offering a multitude of mechanics and gameplay elements, 9mm gives you three short hours of slow-mo-diving run’n’gun-action only interspersed by obligatory quicktime events.

Something rather refreshing about 9mm’s gameplay is how it never cops out (no pun intended). There is little filler to speak of here. Backtracking, key-hunting and trawling through lots of identikit corridors are luckily all absent from the game, leaving the best 9mm has to offer on display at all times.

The problem is, that “best” is hardly great, and manages to get woefully repetitive by the game’s hurried end. Though the game feels polished enough and the shooters decently powerful, there is little depth to the combat. Most confrontations are a matter of running and shooting, then slow-mo-diving into cover as you wait for your health to refill. This procedure nicely solved most of the games challenges.

As (hopefully not) unintentionally hilarious John Kannon’s tale was, when 9mm’s end credits rolled, accompanied by licensed hip-hop music, I was left feeling decidedly unexcited by the game. Besides the short campaign, there is a twelve-player multiplayer mode with weapon unlocks and level-ups, because as we all know Call of Duty 4 made it law that all shooters must feature this. However, the mode is not worth much discussion,  standard deathmatch and team-deathmatch, the latter called “cops ‘n’ ganstas”, are all that feature, and the gunplay mechanics are not engaging or deep enough to provide motivation to play more than a couple of matches or unlock the range of firearms.

In the end, I can only recommend 9mm to bad movie-fans who attribute little value to their time and money. If you are a gamer looking for a hardcore experience on your iDevice, there are far better options out there.

 2 out of 5

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Editorial: Microsoft E3 Conference Recap

By
Magnus Risebro
– June 8, 2011Posted in: Blogs, Magnus' Blog, News, Xbox 360

“Sorry, gamers, Kinect is here to stay. Aww, don’t cry! Here, have some Ice-T playing Gears of War. Not doing it for you? Well how about some Halo Combat Evolved Beautiful Edition? Still not enough? Oh, well, you can have Halo 4 I guess.”

The above paragraph neatly describes my experience with this year’s Microsoft E3 press conference. Apparently unfazed by the mild backlash towards last year’s focus on family friendly Kinect-powered hand-waving, Microsoft belted out a conference tall on said hand-waving and short on truly exciting news. Sure, the hand-waving might now be accompanied by voice-speaking and bolted on to games you may well care about, but the press conference was a disappointing affair nonetheless.

Modern Warfare 3 footage surprising no-one opened the show with a ”Meh”-inducing submarine shootout and boat chase, before giving way to a Tomb Raider Gritty-’Boot gameplay demo we’d read about months ago. Despite impressive graphics and promising news about this game, the demo failed to excite me, largely due to the part featured being so scripted watching it on a livestream would likely not differ dramatically from actually playing it.

Shortly following was the charismatic Peter Moore, talking about Kinect support for slightly annual EA Sports games.More interesting about the EA segment was Mass Effect-like Mass Effect 3 gameplay where Shepard’s dialogue-options were determined using Kinect. After selecting dialogue options, first with ever-lovable Mordin Solus, then with -gasp – a female Krogan, Shepard stabbed an armor-wearing goon with his glowing Sci-Fi knife while the voice-commanding his squad to attack other armor-wearing goons.

Speaking of squads, after the Mass Effect 3 gameplay there was new trailer for Ghost Recon: Future Soldier featuring ironically-used classical music and time-freeze camera-pan tacticoolness. A french-accented Ubisoft rep briefly strolled out on stage to chat about the game, before handing over the reigns to a younger fellow who demonstrated the dismantling, building, and accessorizing of guns using Kinect in the game. “Optimize ranged”, he would utter, and the game would assemble a long-barreled assault-rifle with a scope for him. The Minority Report-like motion-based menu-navigation shown off was thoroughly impressive, but past being thoroughly impressive, is there any benefit to playing this way? I’m skeptical.

However, the gun-porn was quickly cut short by a PR speech about a “new entertainment experience” using Kinect, in the form of a new Xbox dashboard. We were shown videos of attractive people elegantly motioning at the  screen to watch X-men films and use “that-other-search-engine” Bing to look online for more X-men stuff. Also included in this “New experience” is the ability to watch UFC with your friends using online social networking magic. The presentation was eerily similar to last year’s, the primary difference being Bruno Mars having been replaced by X-men and UFC.

This far, it was not a thrilling conference. Nothing that had been shown would have been massive news during any normal week, let alone E3. Not good enough, MS.

"I'll be doing the soundtrack too, right?"

The conference needed something bigger. It needed something better. It needed something more badass. It was lucky then, that Cliffy B himself strutted into the limelight accompanied by none other than Old-Skool gangsta-rapper ” Ice-T. Together, they played Gears of War 3, which looked like the solid cover-based shootery Gears has always been. The demo given depicted took place in what looked like a level set onboard a tanker ship, and featured a battle against a towering boss with a glowing eye as weak-spots. Cliff and Ice-T shot the weak spot and concluded the level. “Gears of War 3 is looking quite excellent”, you might have thought to yourself. “Maybe things are looking up.”

And for three more trailers, they kind of did. First up of these was Crytek-developed Project Kingdoms, now named “Ryse”. The mysterious teaser shown last year did not offer much info about the game, so I was naturally intrigued as a powerful voice boomed out at me while images of a dog roaming about the streets of a war-torn Roman-times Rome among armored men stabbing each other passed to reveal the player would participate in this stabbing action through the magic of, you guessed it, Kinect. As you may have deducted, I’m not a huge fan of the peripheral, but as far as swinging your arms goes, doing it to simulate melee battle seems rather fun and apropriate, especially when it’s being brought to you by highly competent studio: Crytek.  Having said that, the Kinect has hardly had luck with fighting-games in the past, as the Metacritic score for Fighters Uncaged can testify to.

After the Ryse trailer, the huge screen overlooking the stage went dark as the soothing voices of a female choir began to sing some very distinctive notes. The rumors were true: Halo remake! As the Nostalgia-triggering Marty O’ Donnel masterpiece pumped out of the speakers, we were presented with lovely HD renditions of Combat Evolved’s levels filled with bright colors and shown a release date of November 15, dooming the game to compete with CoD.

The final third of this trilogy of decent excitement was a slickly-directed Forza 4 trailer using Kanye West’s tune, “Power”. Apparently Turn 10 had forgotten that Saint’s Row 3’s recent trailer also used the very same song in a similarly slick way. It’s Forza. But with more stuff. As good a recipe as expected.

Then, ultra-ambitious hype-machine Peter Molyneux appeared briefly to announce his wonderful next Fable game, combining the two elements all gamers hold dearest: On-rails shooting and gesture-based combat. Oh, wait. After a rather unexciting demo, I was left with little of that classic Molyneux hype. Is Fable: the Journey, as it’s called, what became of Milo & Kate?

The strangest segment of the conference was the following announcement, about which I’m unsure what to feel: Minecraft, coming to Xbox! Being a fan of Mojang’s indie megahit, I still see no point in Minecraft being released on consoles. In my opinion, the entire idea of Minecraft is based around total freedom regarding what you want to do with the game. Community-texture packs, modding, and other PC-exclusive shenanigans are what define Minecraft. Relocating it to Microsoft’s strictly-monitored console seems pointless to me.

From there on, the conference proceeded to present a stream of other Kinect titles barely worth mentioning. Suffice to say, last year’s two decent Kinect titles are getting sequels, Double Fine’s Sesame Street looks cute, and that Star Wars Kinect demo showed last year is actually a game.

Finally, Microsoft closed off the conference with Halo 4, unexpectedly numbered, expectedly announced. The has-to-be-CG teaser trailer showed Master Chief being awoken from the coma he was left in at Halo 3′s end by AI lady Cortana, whom he promptly slots into his helmet. Dodging bits of exploding spaceship, he jetpacks out of the frigate and into space, where he faces a massive, glowing, alien construction with some sort of portal in the center.

Did Halo really need any more sequels? Not really. Am I excited about Halo 4? Naturally. Was this a good press conference?

Hardly. A misplaced focus on things the majority of the E3-attending crowd has little interest in – though it was probably inevitable that the focus would be placed on Kinect given the peripheral’s good sales last Christmas – as well as total lack of any truly unexpected announcements has left me somewhat bitter about the Xbox’s near future. Sure, many of the games shown off will likely be great, but the conference was lacking the surprise and bombast you want from E3. Here’s hoping the upcoming conferences deliver.

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Playing Along

By
Magnus Risebro
– June 1, 2011Posted in: Blogs, Magnus' Blog, Staff Blogs

Here’s a story:

John Marston, old-west-dwelling, sympathetic criminal, rides into a desert town on his beautiful, brown stallion. Looking around, he spies people feeding chickens, hanging by the saloon, and generally behaving in an authentically old-western manner. Marston has been forced by the FBI to track down his once-fellow gang members and bring them in, dead or alive. Not having much regard for the authorities, whom he views as no different from the criminals they prosecute save for a badge, he has grudgingly embarked on his mission in the hopes of one day being able to live peacefully with his family, away from his old life of crime.

Marston is a man who has long grown weary of violence and chaos. Yet, for some reason or other, he suddenly decides to jump off his stallion, pull out his revolver, and empty it into the leg of a random hooker he passes by. The prostitute falls to the ground, bleeding from six holes in her leg. Then he  looks through his extensive arsenal, switches the six-shooter for a Molotov cocktail, and hurls it into the aforementioned saloon, setting the piano player inside on fire. Why?

Because Rockstar San Diego wanted to build an expansive world were all was possible, and because Joe Gamer wanted to see what the “NPC on fire” animation was like. But John Marston’s spontaneous killing-sprees have no place in Red Dead’s riveting tale of heavy themes and three-dimensional characters. The possibility is there, but you’re not supposed to utilize it.

It’s a dilemma in game-design: Feature killable civilians, and risk spoiling the intended narrative experience, or disable the player from killing civilians, and possibly stretch the suspension of disbelief too far. A big part of open-world games such as Red Dead’s appeal is the sense of a living, breathing world you can impact freely. Innocent people having a magical resistance to bullets has the potential to completely shatter this feeling.

In some cases, doing things in-game that are detrimental to the atmosphere even benefit the player. Need some quick bucks in Red Dead? Gun down a few shop-owners and collect the winnings. It kills the mood, but it helps you “win”. The issue of having to “play along” with the game to properly enjoy it is not exclusive to open-world titles either: Take those “epic” moments in Halo, when the orchestral score kicks into full gear and gruff-voiced marines shout “GO GO GO!”, getting you swept up in the moment and making you want to run heroically into the enemy’s plasma fire, despite that being a tactic sure to get you swiftly murdered.

But somehow, hiding behind a rock and carefully sniping away at the enemy forces is not appealing when sweeping melodies and thumping war-drums are booming out of the speakers. The game is pulling you in different directions; you want to experience an emotionally powerful moment, but you also have an urge to win, and having to retry due to a failed attempt will no doubt ruin the mood just as staring at rock-texture will. It’s a paradox that pops up far too often in games.

May I suggest not enjoying this awe-inspiring vista?

 

As of now, the only apparent solution to the problem is restricting the player and forcing the emotion, atmosphere and narrative down his throat. Some games do, and oftentimes the result will be criticisms of being dumbed-down, overly linear, boring or a similarly negative adjective.

Is it right for developers to expect the player abides by unspoken, unenforced rules to enjoy their intended experience? Is it by the game or the player’s error that Niko Bellic shotgunning his girlfriend on date is awfully out of tune with the rest of GTA IV’s plot?
In L.A. Noire, you can’t even draw your gun when the game doesn’t want you to. And it’s your fault,gamers. Much like Red Dead Redemption’s protagonist, your past crimes are coming back to haunt you. There had to be consequences for all those hookers brutally put to sleep by the grill of your car.

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The App Core: Epic Gameloft

By
Magnus Risebro
– March 11, 2011Posted in: Blogs, Magnus' Blog, Staff Blogs

“Among the heaps of physics puzzlers and reaction-based platformers found on the App Store, there exists a somewhat limited, but ever growing, array of games that strive to do something greater than replicating the success of Angry Birds.
While I cannot fault the grandmas out there for wanting to fling avian creatures into bricks, this column is dedicated to hardcore gaming on the iPhone. It will feature reviews, news and editorials and shall hopefully enjoy a nice, long run. Intro out of the way, let us delve into this week’s topic!


Review scores are jokes. Sales figures mean nothing. And GOTY-awards? No one cares about such trifles. No, in space-year 2011, the only true way of determining a game’s success is by one simple question: Can one find a Gameloft-produced rip-off of it on the App Store?

For Grand Theft Auto, Zelda, and Call of Duty, as well as several other big-name games, the answer to the above question would be “yes”. The quality of these rip-offs may be hit-and miss, but undeniably, Gameloft is filling in some App Store gaps the license-holding corporations are reluctant to fill themselves. The kids want Halo on their iPhones, and Gameloft gives it to them, with or without the brand. It is good news then that, judging by a recent GDC announcement, Gameloft-developed rip-offs of the future might be a whole lot prettier:

Through a team up with Epic “Look at our tech” Games, Gameloft has licensed the bump-map-tacular Unreal Engine 3 for use in four upcoming titles. The engine has already been proven to run well on the iPhone in Chair Entertainment’s Infinity Blade, though the design of said game utilized its snazzy visuals poorly, allowing the player no free movement.

 

Infinity Blade brought the bump-mapped goodness of Unreal 3 to iDevices. Bump-mapped goodness aside, the game was mediocre.

With Gameloft in all likelihood releasing their Modern Warfare-clone series Modern Combat’s third installment this year, a very console-like iPhone FPS mightbe upon us.

Contemporary iPhones being as powerful as they are, it was about time Gameloft replaced their outdated engine, and what better replacement than the mobile-friendly Unreal 3?

1

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and multiplayer storytelling

By
Magnus Risebro
– January 12, 2011Posted in: Blogs, Magnus' Blog, Staff Blogs, Vagary.TV

Having cleansed my palette with both Halo Reach and the annual Call of Duty, returning to Bad Company 2 has granted me a revelation about multiplayer: Design-philosophy used in single-player games can be applied to multiplayer with surprisingly favorable results. Let’s analyze:

FPS campaigns usually set the stage with one goal in mind; provide a visceral, intense experience. The more a shooter excites my survival instincts and compels me to kill these d-bags shooting at me, the more that shooter has succeeded.

The Call of Duty series popularized the approach of pushing the player through heavily-scripted sequences to achieve this effect, a design-method that has become widely used for all action titles, shooter and otherwise. When scripting is used successfully, the player can be manipulated to think and feel just what the game wants him or her to, and thus can be provided with the aforementioned intense and cinematic experience.


Battlefield: Bad Company 2 also sports a CoD-clone campaign (final mission set on an airplane anyone?), however, the most filmic moments are found in the online multiplayer.

Though praised by critics, Bad Company 2’s multiplayer offering pulls a trick so clever it passes right over many gamer’s heads:
Where FPS multiplayers traditionally dump a load of hopefully-balanced guns and maps in players’ lap and asks them to make their own fun, Bad Company is more ambitious:

Every map, from it’s building placement to vehicle-spawn time, is designed to make multiplayer matches feel like Hollywood battle-scenes. More precisely, to feel like scripted video games aping Hollywood battle-scenes.

In BC2, the most effective ways to play are almost always the most spectacular and rewarding. As a player, I could camp in the second floor of a remote building and earn myself a few points for killing unsuspecting enemies walking through the door. However, a more fun option would be to play as an engineer and maintain my teammate’s tank, putting myself in danger, but crucially, earning a lot more points.

Employing a risky and team-oriented playing style will reward you both with thrills and points, paradoxically making team-play the most selfish option.

In Call of Duty campaigns, soldiers on screen are AI-chess pieces playing out a script the game demands you follow, in a Battlefield match, those helicopters swiveling out of control and exploding in fiery clouds are being piloted by real players on the other sides of internet connections.

The sniper on a faraway rooftop headshot-ing the  enemy soldier in front of you is a flesh-and-bone human being, as is the enemy soldier himself.

Through the magic of carefully thought-out design, all of these people are brought together to shape battles worthy of the silver screen.  And when it works, it gives the sensation of scale, intensity and immersion found in triple-A single-player experiences.

Yes, the odd match might be populated by jerks who would sell their grandmothers for perfect K/Ds, but the number of – and I hate to say this – epic moments far outweigh the frustrating ones.

Multiplayer games rarely hold my attention for long before I hunger for another single-player adventure, freed from the constraints of other people, but Battlefield fills out the story-craving part of my heart as well as the competitive one.

Coming from Norway, it is in my blood to despise our Swedish neighbors, but when they make games of this calibre, I am content with fighting them virtually.

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Nintendo doing what Nintendon’t

By
Magnus Risebro
– December 24, 2010Posted in: Blogs, Magnus' Blog, Staff Blogs, Vagary.TV

Nintendo is in one of the company’s most interesting periods of time. Both the Wii and the DS are nearing the end of their run, and the world waits in anticipation for a shiny new handheld, the 3DS. This year’s E3 presentation sent out a clear message; no matter your tastes, Nintendo is gunning for you.

Or depending on said tastes, maybe they are trying to woo you with cute puppies instead. Point is, where the Wii was a gaming platform for “Everyone” (Read: Not people who, you know, play games), the 3DS has it’s ambitions set as a console for everyone. The games announced thus far have drawn respect from the hearts of the coldest of hardcore gamers with powerful names such as “Resident Evil” and “Metal Gear Solid”, as well as intriguing the casual onlooker with the idea of stroking 3D house pets with titles like Nintendogs. And as always, the Mario’s and the Zelda’s are present to keep fans of Nintendo’s legacy of original IP’s delighted.

The icing on this delicious game cake is that the console’s graphics, if we are to judge from what we have seen thus far, seem mighty impressive, and coupled with the 3D effects, I expect the visuals will be very good indeed.


Nintendo may have spent the last four years somewhat neglecting their original fans in favor of the masses waiting to be captured, a tactic Microsoft and Sony are only just starting to adopt, too late, I might add, but the 3DS intends to clean out every corner of the gaming world, casual and otherwise.

Video game consoles supporting video games are all well and good, but in space-year 2010, Joe B. Schmo expects his gadgets to do more, and Nintendo aims to please in this area too. Nintendo 3DS will allegedly offer the ability to watch movies in 3D. There is no word on how this will be achieved, wether through PSP-style physical copies, or through digital download. The former is an idea that has no place in today’s instant entertainment world, so here’s hoping Nintendo goes with the latter.

And this is where we encounter Nintendo’s biggest challenge, the company has never been adept at offering robust internet services:
The Gamecube’s ability, or rather, disability to play over the internet was a joke. Exactly four of the system’s titles could be played online, one of which was only released in Japan, and the other three all being Phantasy Star games.

While Xbox owners took intuitive online play for granted, Nintendo fans could only look jealously at them.

And while the Wii and DS might offer online play in more games than the Gamecube did, the experience is still limited, with no player-to-player communication until sixteen-digit “friend-codes” are input.

My point being; in the war of the online services, Nintendo have been bringing muskets to battlefields populated by laser-guided missiles. Catching up to the competition will be no mean feat.

But the real selling point of the 3DS, the true reason why the handheld might just sell like the hottest of hot cakes, is in the name; the 3D.

Nintendo 3DS, through it’s mystical witchcraft, projects 3D images without the need for glasses of any kind. This is a winning formula, and the biggest ace up Nintendo’s sleeve.

Ever since last christmas, the 3D craze started by good old Jimmy Cameron has shown no sign of halting. And sure, it’s possible to play a few PC and console games in 3D, but the process has not been simple enough to appeal to a mainstream crowd.

The need for pricy screens, an extensive setup process and not to mention, cumbersome glasses, has made the masses turn a blind eye to 3D gaming, but it’s an eye Nintendo intends to open.

3D, cheaply and simply, is what everyone wants, and it’s something the Japanese company has the potential to offer.

And it won’t matter if 3D on the 3DS won’t look as good as the one on the PS3, it’s a matter of accessibility and fashionability, neither of which any competitors offer.

The Nintendo 3DS might not have a secured success, but if Nintendo can overcome their hurdles, it sure as hell has the potential for one.

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Infinity Blade Review

By
Magnus Risebro
– December 12, 2010Posted in: Blogs, Magnus' Blog, Mobile Gaming, Reviews, Staff Blogs

Oh, Unreal Engine 3, you just seem to pop up everywhere, don’t you?

It seems your sharp-as-a-knife but slow-loading textures can be found in a third of the games released nowadays.

And as Cliffy B rolls himself another 100 Dollar bill-cigar and blasts off in his Lamborghini with the words “Bigger, Better, more Badass” painted on the side, you now arrive to the iPhone too.

Infinity Blade is the much-hyped iDevice release running on Epic Games’ widely-used engine. The graphical demo released earlier this fall ensured a stream of buzz regarding the game’s visuals, and us internet folks were as pumped as our little geek hearts would allow for a proper console-experience on a handheld.

The truth is, Infinity Blade is anything but. This is a bite-sized, “five-minutes-on-the-buss”-style game, disguised in snazzy graphics. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but the game falters in other areas.

Before I get ahead of myself, let me explain what little story there is:

The hero arrives in the chamber of the God-King (who was apparently not satisfied with being a king and decided to add “god” to his title) and attempts to defeat him, however, the God-King quickly kills our hero using his mythical “Infinity Blade”. This somehow shapes destiny so that the hero’s son will arrive in the God-King’s castle twenty years later to trying to take down his father’s killer. Should he fail, his son will make another attempt, and so on.

Time spent playing Infinity Blade consists mostly of fighting enemies, one at time. This is done through a combat system that has you swiping the screen to slice at your foes, and tapping on-screen buttons to dodge and block.

Although this is quite entertaining at  first, one quickly realizes that every baddie is fought in the same way; figure out when and how they attack, then dodge/block/parry until you get an opportunity to slice back.

There is no subtlety involved, as every said opportunity will be announced with big text saying “BLOCK/DODGE/PARRY BREAK” signaling when it’s time to run your fingers over the screen again.

Between the fights, there exists two things:

Cutscenes, mostly of the protagonist strolling along, and pathetic attempts at exploration, the latter of which go like this:

Your hero stands, looking about. You “drag” the screen about to find bonus items and alternate paths. However there are no real opportunities for finding said paths, only once can you truly choose your way, and even then does selecting one path merely skip a portion of the other.

It’s disappointing, because Infinity Blade’s graphics are truly jaw-dropping, and being able to properly explore the wonderfully-designed castle environments (as one could in the tech-demo!) would have been fantastic.

In addition, Infinity Blade has another major issue: it’s one level long, although the word “long” has no place in a sentence describing this game’s length. Eight to ten fights and a bunch of short cutscenes are all that stand in the way of finishing our hero’s quest. Seeing the credits (Sit through them for a strange “plot”-twist) takes between twenty to sixty minutes depending on how often the God-King sends you back to the start for another attempt.

However, Infinity Blade is not a complete failure, there is a somewhat clever character-customization system that allows you to purchase more shinily-textured gear and assign points to various character traits as you level up.

This is obviously designed with many playthroughs (or rather, a meatier game) in mind, as it is impossible to hit the level cap on the first run through.


Also, despite a near lack of any story-exposition, the game succeeds in conveying an almost mythical atmosphere, you really get a feeling that defeating the God-King is the hero’s prophesied destiny.

This is probably thanks to the moody music that mixes dark bass synths with the traditional fantasy-orchestra fare. Some brilliant visual design also helps set the mood, the castle setting is masterfully crafted, with huge halls and bridges overlooking planes far below. Not to mention the enemy design, which makes excellent use of Unreal 3’s potential for intricate texturing (prepare for some convincingly bulging veins!).

It’s ironic that a tech-demo was released pre-launch, when the final product feels like an unfinished build polished up, with a leveling system slapped on for good measure.

Supposedly, more levels will be released for Infinity Blade in the future, and perhaps this will improve it, however, I can’t rate games based on promises.

Infinity Blade might match console-quality in the graphics stakes, but has more in common with a play-and-forget flash game at heart.

2.5 out of 5.


1

Are gamers a destructive bunch?

By
Magnus Risebro
– December 1, 2010Posted in: Blogs, Magnus' Blog, Vagary.TV


Not long ago, I purchased Halo: Reach, and came home to gun down some virtual aliens, much to my enjoyment.

Roughly two months after that, I, like about 5.6 million others, went out and bought Call of Duty: Black Ops. Coming home, I booted the game up, and in no time computer-people were going down in high-def pools of blood.

It will probably not be long before I go out and buy another game, maybe a shooter, perhaps a beat-’em-up, where I can in some way fight or kill my enemies.

I’m sure Jack Thompson would agree with me when I say an awful lot of games see the player engaging in physical conflict, why aren’t there more games about being say, a lawyer? Like how about a game where you play as an attorney who gets on talk-shows and presents questionable evidence for why video games are planting seeds of evil in kid’s brains?

But I’m getting side-tracked here, there is a reason why so many video games feature violence, and it’s not because gamers are psychopaths with murder-fantasies:

Think about the nature of a “game”. Not necessarily a video-game, just any sort of competition. You can “win” and “lose”, succeed and fail.

The most direct way of translating a loss to a fictional game world is, in most cases, death: Master Chief kills the aliens, aliens lose, Master Chief wins.

Oftentimes, killing the enemies might not be the actual goal the game sets for you, just as dribbling the ball from opposing players is not directly what causes you to win a soccer match.

Even though Master Chief might have been tasked with, say, “disabling the shield generator”, he will probably not be able to without taking out the Covenant in his way.

Killable enemies are not in video games because the people who play them want a substitute for taking a life in reality, they are there as obstacles in the way of a goal. That goal might even be exclusively achievable by killing enemies, but the rule holds true nonetheless, it’s still player vs. obstacles.

When I play an FPS and feel satisfaction from killing my enemies, I feel that satisfaction because I know it means I am one step closer to what the game has convinced me to be “winning”, something today’s games do using increasingly elaborate means, with their stories penned by New York Times Bestselling AuthorsTM and their Hans Zimmer-musical scores.

Video games don’t tap into some mysterious part of brain tissue that has been left untouched since before their invention, humans have always wanted to be intrigued, excited and fascinated, and video games, like other games that man has entertained himself with throughout history, allow more or less instant access to this.

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