• Darksiders

    Darksiders

    I’m on a streak writing reviews for games I’ve been playing, so now it’s time for one that I think...
  • DRM Is For Suckers

    DRM Is For Suckers

    Apparently today we get another example of how worthless and potentially damaging DRM is for PC games.  Ubisoft recently announced...
  • Bioshock 2

    Bioshock 2

    I finally got around to finishing the second Bioshock, and I walked away with mixed feelings that ended up mostly...

Darksiders

Darksiders

I’m on a streak writing reviews for games I’ve been playing, so now it’s time for one that I think deserves a closer look: Darksiders. A lot of reviews will compare this to other games such as Zelda and Metroid, which may be enough to get you excited, but don’t listen too much to these because Darksiders definitely puts the pieces together in an interesting way.

For the most part the game is a cycle of fighting tons of dudes, getting a new move or gadget, and solving a puzzle on your way to a boss fight. It works out well because the combat is pretty mashy with just enough variation built in to keep you trying new things, the puzzles mostly make sense, and your are given new toys regularly enough to keep you from getting too bored. Pacing, pacing, pacing, it’s a mantra that more games should think of using.

Boss fights have always been one of my favorite part of games and Darksiders has some pretty good ones, especially the final one. Full disclosure, I did play the game on hard (points!) and was starting to get mad at the final boss, but managed to calm down, learn the pattern and the proceeded to crush him almost without taking a hit. It manages to walk that fine line between challenging and fun pretty well and there weren’t any parts of the game that proved to be too hard once you play around with the various tools that you have. I found myself enjoying the learning process because I felt like ihad genuine options and wasn’t just trying to find the way to cheese te game.

Single button combat has never worked so well for me. It’s really somewhat surprising the amount of moves they crammed into only using the x button for attack. There are plenty of upgrades and plenty of special attacks and secondary weapons so you can experiment and find your own style, which is nice.  A mistake that a lot of action games make is that they try to get too technical and force you into a single way of fighting, I was really glad to play in my own demented way and have the game allow it.  For example  I’m not a huge fan of blocking when a dodge is available and managed to make it through the game blocking maybe 10 times total.

Darksiders is not without problems though, it felt a bit boxed in at times and didn’t really utilize the world as well as they could have. It also felt a little padded at times with arena challenges that would have worked just as well in a separate mode. On the whole you get the sense that a kitchen sink approach was used and that there was a lot of experimentation, which led to a slight bit of jankyness, but nothing that would dilute the experience.

Darksiders is an example of the kinds of games I wish there were more of; solid, well-rounded experiences that don’t over-extend themselves.  It also has one of the better endings in recent memory, managed to get me really pumped up for the inevitable sequel.  Bottom line: play this game.

DRM Is For Suckers

DRM Is For Suckers

Apparently today we get another example of how worthless and potentially damaging DRM is for PC games.  Ubisoft recently announced a DRM scheme that required a constant internet connection to play even single-player only games.  Well within a single day the new scheme has already been cracked.  Why even bother spending the money to develop these complex schemes when everything gets cracked eventually…

Especially for all the anger it creates with gamers over the inconvenience that it causes.  I know I play plenty of games on my netbook while disconnected so this setup just wouldn’t work for me, at all.  If your game will eventually get hacked and you end up pissing off a bunch of people then what is the big net gain here?  What do publishers stand to gain?

There are more creative ways to curb piracy such as connecting with your customers and providing value to owning a legal copy.  One other big problem is that games are mostly overpriced and often go without a demo or free trial so jumping in blind for the full asking price is a risky proposition.  Something is wrong with the industry and how it is handling the perceived threat of piracy, but DRM is clearly not the answer.

Bioshock 2

Bioshock 2

I finally got around to finishing the second Bioshock, and I walked away with mixed feelings that ended up mostly positive. I liked my time with the game, and the story felt on-par with the first game, which was my biggest cocern going in. Though my thoughts on the multiplayer have been made very clear, I still think the game is worth playing if you enjoyed the first game at all.

Gameplay-wise it felt like there were more options and that the mechanics had been tweaked just enough to improve the experience noticeably. Nothing really earth-shattering, just some nice enhancements. Really the only complaint I have is that the game simply becomes too easy once you stabilize, just like it did in the first one. I played both through on the hardest setting with no vita-chambers and I felt like I was a god in the last several levels, roughly everything past Pauper’s Drop. It probably had something to do with the drill dash.

My favorite aspect of playing the games in the series is the frantic nature of the early game on hard when you are searching every single container and trying to scrounge enough to just get by. Once the game loses that sense of desperation it feels a bit soft and like you’re just going through the moions. It probably doesn’t help that the game has an extremely strong sense if routine and repetition built into it. Speaking of which, the big daddy/little sister thing felt a bit tedious and grinding in the first one, and feels even worse in this one, considering they simply lengthened it an added in the inevitable big sister encounter after you are done.

I’ve seen and heard a lot of reviews proclaiming how great the big sisters are in that they are “the complete opposite” of big daddies. Problem being that I fought them both in the same exact way so I didn’t really notice from the gameplay so much. Same goes for the brutes, felt like just an alternate bouncer skin.  Part of me wanted an epic boss fight like in the first one, which provided a god challenge, but upon reflecting on the end of Bioshock 2 I feel like the final encounters felt more natural and made more sense. My intial reaction was a bit sour, but I now see what they were going for and like it very much.

All of this stuff is nitpicking though, the game itself is fun and the story is compelling just as it was in the first. I liked the shooting and the options better this time around and didn’t feel as limited as I did in the first game, which was really nice.  Also I don’t feel that enough can be said about the world of Rapture and how well constructed it is, it makes the game have a feel that is totally unique and that totally works in providing an interesting setting for a very fun shooter.

When it came to scoring  Bioshock 2 I struggled, it had a few flaws that detracted from the experience (bugs, Sofia Lamb feels added in) and the multiplayer is pretty much garbage, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to detract point for it’s inclusion.  I think the multiplayer portion rated by itself deserves 2 stars, but that I wouldn’t really factor that in to my overall rating since it wasn’t really what I was there for.  Despite Sofia Lamb feeling like she was forced in I really did enjoy the story a lot, and I think that’s what carried the game through all of my nitpicks to arrive at the final score.  Like I said earlier, you should 100% play this game if you liked the first at all, it’s a fun experience.

White Knight Chronicles

White Knight Chronicles

I have been looking forward to White Knight Chronicles for far too long. It was practically announced at the launch of the PS3 for goodness sake! The waiting is done and I finally got to put my meaty claws on the final product and it disappointed me on many levels.

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Don’t Believe The Hype: Bioshock 2’s Multiplayer Is Broken

Don’t Believe The Hype: Bioshock 2’s Multiplayer Is Broken

So I’ve been playing a lot of multiplayer for Bioshock 2, and I finally had to drop it today. After reading so many reviewers proclaiming it as “surpisingly fun” and “shockingly good” I just have to call bullshit. It’s technically broken, horribly unbalanced, and just strangely put together.

The first thing you get is a slapped on apartment that let’s you “be” your character and do the first round of customizing and then walk to a bathysphere to start playing. You will probably never see this again since you can find a match through the menu faster. Who decided that this was a good idea to spend money developing? It gives you some audio to explain the multiplayer “story” (so many reviewers mention this a great feature) which is really dumb and uninteresting.

Hey remember how Fontaine and Ryan fought? You can now pretend to be a part of that war by doing totally random things! Also Big Daddies and splicers team up to save little sisters, how’s that for canon?

Besides all the silly wrappings the actual gameplay isn’t much better. The maps are on the large size for 5v5 play, and don’t really provide anything interesting. Something is also weird with how the damage is done in the game, 3 point blank shotgun hits sometimes don’t kill opponents, but 2 horribly missed grenades will. You can’t help but notice a weirdly large disparity between guns and opponents. You’ll do the standard MW2-esque progression, but here each new weapon really obsoletes the previous one, and you’ll have a lot of fun fighting people with better guns. You’ll remember when you see the first opponent with the grenade launcher, and you’ll get your revenge once you unlock it beating down noobs in droves. But alas, then it’s on to the nail gun…

They fucked up the recipe, badly. But all of that might be forgivable if the modes were organized in a sensible way. Would you rather spend 3 or 15 minutes to get almost the same amount of experience? These are the tough choices you’ll have to make when staring down the mode selection screen. No playlists, just plain old mode selection with all completely bread and butter modes. A separate studio did the muliplayer, and you can really tell since it feels very much like a boxed product.

Above and beyond all else though the game suffers from a bad technical implementation, you’ll constantly have laggy games and game crashes (360 locks up), go ahead look online and see. I’ve been killed through walls and shot at where guys used to be (before they snapped to somewhere else) so many times thanks to the awesome netcode in this game.

It’s 2010 guys, and you’re making a multi-million dollar game, get your shit together.

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